Editing Practical - Screenshots for Importing/Ingesting

Screenshots for importing/ ingesting

Before I could do any sort of editing, I needed to get the footage from the shoulder camera I used to film. To do this I used a USB lead and connected the camera to the computer. Instead of dragging the clips to a random location; I used a program called Adobe Prelude which imports/ingests all the clips to a given location. Here is the process I went through:

To start the process, I created a new folder in the D drive called “Establishing Espionage”. All my clips, sound effects and working files will be stored here. I must save it in the D drive otherwise I will lose the files as these computers are not part of a network. After creating the folder, I loaded up Adobe Prelude, which is the blue highlighted program, in the image above.

After loading prelude, I created a new project and saved the file, in my folder in D drive. This too was given the name of "Establishing Espionage" so that I know all the files in the folder are related to the same project. 

Once this was saved, I went to the tab on the top right of the screen. "Ingest". This will allow me to start the process of importing the clips. 

(The screenshot is not the best, although the ingest tab is the one of the left, after pressing it this menu came up.

On this menu ,there was 3 different things you have to do, to start transferring the clips. 

In the top right of the screen is the transfer window. In the transfer window I selected where I wanted the clips to be imported to. In this case I wanted it to go to my own folder in the D drive. It will then create a sub folder with the date and time. This will mean once the importing process is complete I will have a copy of the footage in the D drive; so I can then remove the USB connection from the camera and start to edit my clips together. 

In the top left of the screen is the storage structure of the computer. I navigated through this until I found the removable disk N, which was the camera. I then went into the AVCHD folder which was where my clips were. This this brought up the middle section on the screen.

Before clicking check all, I made sure that only my clips where there. In fact, these clips only belonged to the day of  my shooting, so I clicked check all. This means all of these clips will be transferred to the D drive, even those that where bad takes. This is no problem as when I am in premiere pro I can pick which clips I want to use. 

After making sure all these factors were complete and correct, I clicked the ingest button, in the bottom right of the screen. This started to move the clips from the camera to the D drive. Whilst this was happening this menu closed and a display on the left showed me which files were being transferred. 

Here are all the ingested clips:

After this was done, I checked my D drive to make sure all the clips were there.

Upon inspection all clips had been transferred to the D drive. This is an exact copy of what was on the camera, this meant that the import had been a success. The next step is to open the files in Premiere Pro, instead of  me opening premiere pro and importing each one; I can send the files from Prelude to Pro. To do this I held down the shift key and highlighted all of the clips. I then right clicked with the mouse which brought up the option "send to Premiere Pro"

This opened a menu, which wanted me to give the folder a name and to browse for a location to put the file. Again, I selected the D drive for reasons stated above, the clips will not move from this folder so none of the programs should get confused on file location. 

Here are all my clips in Premiere Pro, the transfer worked fine and now I can begin the edit the clips into a sequence. 

Throughout the editing process all my files have been stored in the same place, Cameron15/Establishing Espionage folder, in the D drive . As you can see the top folder is the original footage, then the next 4 folders are the saved files for all the programs I have used. The next two folders down are copies of the audio and video. Followed by separate folders for all the sound effects I will be adding in and the Zoom mic audio.  Last of all, the other items in my folder are the program saved data themselves. The actual saved program files are the ones that I was working on to produce my video, in this case Adobe: Audition, Premiere and Prelude. If I didn't keep my folder organised then it would mean editing would take longer as I could lose files. By having the audio and video separate is also makes it easier to find what I am looking for whilst editing. The naming of the files also means that I know what is in the file without opening it.  In this case the files either have the title of "EE" or "Establishing Espionage"

After importing my clips into Pro, I check over my clips to see what they were like. Once I was happy  I began to edit my clips together. In these series of screenshots you will see the key stages in my editing process .Such as going from the original shots, to color grading and to the cut down sequence that makes the final edit.

The first thing I did to start the edit was send one of the clips to a new sequence. This will set the frame size to be the same throughout the edit, so all the frame widths and lengths will be the same. 

I then decided that I wanted the clip to fade in. To do this I went into effects, video transition and dragged the effect of, cross dissolve to the start of the clip. The original duration of the effect was too long so I dragged it down to around 1 and ½ seconds.

 To cut my clips I used the in and out keys on the top left preview window. I marks when I want the clip to start and O marks the end of the clip. To get the precision I used the arrow keys to find the exact frame location. I did this to build up a sequence of shots. I will now display some screenshots of me building up a sequence.

(The blue bar indicates the the area I took from the clip)

After I had done this, I check over my final sequence. I made a few tweaks to the clips that ran on for too long/ were too short. Once I was happy with the overall sequence, I inserted credits at the end. I did this by going to title and default roll. I could then enter all the details I wanted. 

Once all the credits were typed up, I placed them into the middle of the screen. I then cut the credits to the pace I wanted, as I did not want them to run on for too long. 

Once I was happy with the credits I moved on to colour correcting my clips. Before I did this to my whole clip, I sent one of the clips to a new sequence to practice the method. I learnt to colour correct by following a tutorial, once I got used to doing this, it was easy to do. I did color correction as certain shots were not correctly white balanced, and some of the shots had too much of one color. By doing this method I could restore the balance in color and make all my clips look the same, even though they were shot apart.

For the tutorial I learnt to use the fast color corrector and to turn the preview on. By turning the preview on it will show me the before and after effects of correcting the color. 

To correct the color, I used the picker tool and selected a piece of the footage that should be white. This then removes any unwanted shades and restores the white to the image; this is known as “white balancing”. I did this for one clip then copy and pasted it to all the others. The next screen shots show this process. 

Here is a screenshot that shows the before and after of the color correcting:

By looking at the before and after, it allows me to judge what I have done and to see the improvements I made. Once I used the picker I went  into window and color correction mode. I then set one of the windows to display the levels of RGB (RGB parade) . For each image I made sure there was an equal amount of color and that the top and bottom of the graph just touched the borders. Here is proof for my clips.

By putting my set up in this mode, I can see the changes in my clip whilst making improvements. This also shows me a graph representation that is judging the color in the shot for me as I cannot rely on using my eye to judge the color. Whilst doing this I was also making sure to get an even amount of the 3 colors, RGB (Red, Green and Blue)

After color grading I decided to add my title in to the front of my film. To do this I created a default title screen which I placed over my first clip. I also applied a fade in and out so that it matches the video. I used a variety of texts in my tests and didn't decide onto a font until the end.

After I was happy with this process, I moved on turning some of the darker clips into lighter ones. So that it matched the tone of the other clips in the sequence.Using the techniques from the color grading, I used the RGB curves/luma curves to make some of the darker clips lighter. This would mean controlling the mix of all the Red, Green and Blue curves. I could then manipulate each clip individually. I did this by using the master curve, which controlled all of the colors (RGB) at once.

Once this once done, I rendered all my clips by pressing the enter key. This finalized all the clips and applied the color grade settings fully.

After I was happy with the visuals I moved onto the audio design. Although, my wild track wasn't successful as all I got was wind noise, which wasn’t very helpful. I will have to take the audio from clips I didn’t use or manipulate the clips that have backing sounds in them. They will all be from the clips shot at the park, as every location has a different ambience sound. To complete the sound design area for my film, I selected the whole sequence and sent the audio to Adobe Audition. This software offers more features and is easier to play with the sound design in a creative way.

In audition I fixed my ambience by replacing some of the broken clips with an audio track from another video clip. I also looked at the intensity of sound files using the spectral frequency. I also got rid of some of the unwanted background sounds by capturing the unwanted sound by drawing round the wave, through identification in the spectral frequency. I then captured a noise print and then dragged it round the whole audio clip; the print is then removed from the clip. I also did this because there was a leaf blower in the background, which would distract the audience away from the action.

I did all this by editing the audio to video; this matches the audio to the action in the sounds. When I added sound effects, I created a new stereo track for each so I could manipulate each sound individually. Each clip (apart from music) was set to the frequency of -12db so it would play normally on every device; this is so I am not editing the audio to the headphones but to the sound itself.  

When adding in sounds that weren't my own, I used a free sound effects website (Soundbible and freesfx). Which means I will not be breaking copyright as they are public domain and free to use. If I didn’t use a royalty free website like this, then I would need to ask for permission before using a sound clip. As it would break copyright laws and regulations.

To fade out in an audio clip, the yellow line can have key frames inserted on them. So if I wanted a fade in then I would place two key frames on the straight line. I would then drag the first key frame down to the bottom left corner so the audio would gradually begin to increase in DB level.

When adding in my sound effects, I placed each one on their own stereo track. This was so I could manipulate each slip individually without effecting the rest of the clips. This also made it easier to find sound effects and each layer was named effectively. I.E a sound of footsteps, the track would be called "footsteps".

Once I was done doing this, I exported the whole multi track mix down and then replaced the audio in premiere pro with the mix down. 

I then exported my video file to a H.264, HD vimeo 1080p, 25 frames per second. This was done because 25 frames was the same amount as the fps I recorded at. The file type also gives a clear image and is a commonly used file type.

I then uploaded my video to Vimeo and YouTube. In my YouTube description I used this to advertise my film " The life of a ninja is a challenging one. But where does the life of a ninja begin? Follow the training of a amateur ninja, who only has one desire, to capture the flag. "

I then did the same for Vimeo. 

This concludes the editing process.