Video Editing

This morning when I should have been working on the daily blog post I decided to install Ubuntu on an external hard drive to see if it still worked as I remembered it working. It does, sort of.

There are two approaches. You could install Linux straight onto the internal HD of a mac device but if you do, and you encounter problems then it could take hours to fix your mistake. With an exteranl disk in target drive mode you can experiment to your heart’s content with an SSD that you can wipe, and reformat, and start again, if something messes up badly.

In the past if you wanted to be a video editor you also needed to be a camera operator, and to be a camera operator you needed to be a video editor. By knowing both skills you shot good material because you knew how hard bad material was to use. As a result of this videos were worth watching with all of our attention.

In recent years, there has been a move towards multimedia editing, where you don’t expect people to watch the video while sitting in front of a TV. You expect them to be looking at a mobile phone while commuting, or scrolling through a social media feed. Job offers reflect this. You often see jobs that required perfect spelling and grammar, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects. The need for an editor to be a camera operator is gone. We have gone from videos being made by camera operators and video editors who love their medium, to graphists, who overlay graphics over video. They’re making slideshows, rather than video content.

Objectified is a documentary about industrial design that has been divided into interviews with individuals about a diversity of designs, from the casing of the Mac Book Pro to chairs, a CD player that behaves like a fan and much more.

On Linkedin, this documentary has been cut up and split into chapters so that you can either watch the documentary in its entirety or you can watch it as video on demand with the designers you’re interested in or familiar with. It’s a contemporary implementation of the documentary genre because it assumes that you have five minutes at a time to devote to this documentary.

A few years ago I said that I would upgrade my mac book pro when apple came out with a dual display laptop where the keyboard is a touchscreen display that changes to suit the application in use. Two days ago I had a change of heart. I do not expect Apple to come out with such a device. I have set my sites on a different idea. An edit suite which requires VR goggles to use. The edit suite could be used either by standing people or sitting people. Turn your eyes to the left and you see the rushes. You would have a choice. The rushes could be shown as keyframes on a board or as film strips. Motion feedback gloves would be worn that provide tactile feedback. Double click and the selected clip appears in the player window. With current editing systems keyboard shortcuts are learned and memorised by editors to avoid using the mouse. In this case specific finger positions would be short cuts. You could trim, splice, insert, overwrite, make multiclips and more. Sound and vision could be faded as if using physical controls. Imagine multicamera editing in Final Cut VR. The setup would be like in an OB van except that you’re in an edit suite or in a park. You could even be sitting in the back seat of a car. The beauty of such a setup is that monitors and displays could eventually be removed from the desk to be replaced with goggles and a pair of gloves. This means that the same edit suite could have a virtual 64 channel audio mixing board for sound technicians, colour correction wheels for colour graders, vision mixing console for vision mixers and standard video editing controls for video editors. In theory we could go back to the jug/shuttle controls from linear editing days. I now look forward to seeing whether Avid, Apple or Adobe come out with the first virtual audiovisual creation suite. Imagine how immersive the experience would be. Enjoy the notion that this virtual environment will allow you to stand or sit down.

If you’re learning about editing but don’t want to spend much money then Quicktime pro is a cheap and easy straight cut editor. It’s quick and easy to use. With the short cut apple+c apple+N and apple+v you have a very simple editor. Using J to play backwards, k to pause and L to play normally you control how the video plays. With the I key for marking in points and the O key for out points you’ve got everything you need. Find a video clip that is recognised by Quicktime and play the video. Find the footage you want to keep with the J,K,L keys and mark your in and out points. Once this is done cut the video with apple+C and open a new player with apple+n. Paste the video segment in your new player and you’ve got the first shot. Repeat this process with the source video and you’ve got a simple straight cuts editor. There was some footage I wanted to process quickly, without opening finalcut pro and it worked fine. It’s more intuitive than imovie (for me at least) and it’s very affordable.

Documentally - Oct 1, 2007

Good points. I try to do the same and am in fact staying over in Birmingham tomorrow to save on the unessesary milage over two days. I also like to use my laptop on the battery where possible so as not to be contantly drawing on the mains. I am sure switching between uses less power. I recently bought one of these devices as well.. http://www.reuk.co.uk/Owl-Wireless-Electricity-Monitor.htm It is amazing seeing what is being used and when..

When I started video editing it required a powerful desktop computer and moving it around was hard. Now I’m working on a laptop. This is great for the environment and here’s why.

When the equipment you are using is portable it means that you can edit from the client’s offices rather than your own. Several times already I have gone to the office of those whom I work for. If there is a desk free beside them then they may go along with their daily routine whilst I keep working on my own work. Once there’s a rough cut I show them the edit and see whether they like it, apply any changes and once that’s done I can author a DVD.

Those words were magic, a writer can expect to review his work over a hundred times. That so many times. Can you imagine going through something one hundred times? By the end, you’re going to go mad. Actually, when I’m working on video it’s not unusual for me to watch the same five minutes 20-30 times till I’m satisfied it’s perfect. I’ve been applying that procedure to my dissertation which is why I still haven’t completed it. I was feeling discouraged this morning but this afternoon when I heard the sentence I’m now using as a title for this I felt encouraged. Of course, it’s hard, of course, it’s repetitive but if you want to write well you’ve got to give it the time it requires. What’s the point in having a dissertation to write if you’re going to do it within two days. What about all the thought process. What about all the conversations you’re missing out on. I joked with someone who was still taking notes today, “45 credits…. ah that’s worth at least 45 minutes of work”. She probably hates me for saying that but come on, it’s your dissertation. It’s the first time that people want you to blab for so long about a topic of your choosing. No one else tells you what to write, only how you should write it. Some friends are smart, they chose the subjects they love. So did I, means you’re studying even when you’re not. Add to this the process of writing. It’s enjoyable. Put some music on, zone out for an hour or two and just write, research, and learn more about what you love, then write more. Write to learn rather than the other way around. I love the thought of writing to learn. It’s a book I read several years ago, when still at La Chat in Geneva. I think I’d like to be a writer. I don’t mind academic writing as long as I have as much time as I want, or else organise my time so that I fool myself into believing I have as much time as I want. There’s one paragraph that’s taunting me at the moment, I’m going to trick it though, and it will be tamed into a relevant bit of text.