See, I've been thinking about trying to vid for over a year now. By now, I've got at least seven or eight Works in Progress Solely Existing in My Head, because the software seems so daunting. And it is! I started off by trying Windows Movie Maker, figuring that it couldn't be that hard to pick up. And it looked pretty straightforward, until I imported an .avi of an episode and discovered that it only recognized the audio and not the video. I tried to figure out what was going on, via Google searches and looking through the tagged entries of the LJ vidding comm and making sure that I'd downloaded the right codec, and -- still nothing. I contemplated converting my avis to another format, but figured I'd see if I had better luck with another program.
So I, er, acquired Sony Vegas and couldn't get it to install. Next stop: Adobe Premiere. I got that to install easily enough, and it handled the avi files fine, but refused to import the mp3 of the song I wanted to use *sigh*. Which, okay, I could handle that, and I wanted to edit the song down anyways for a) length and b) wildly inappropriate lyrics. So I opened up Audacity for the first time, and it all went pretty smoothly (I hope? I cut a section out of the middle, and I think the resulting splice works but, hey, 5:30 am). Audacity let me export the edited song as a wav file that Premiere was now happy to import.
So I guess the next thing to do is watch the episodes and jot down scenes to clip? The Premiere interface is absurdly intimidating -- did I mention that I needed to choose an aspect ratio before it would even let me start a new project? -- and certainly overkill for my immediate needs, but so far it works. Maybe I'll play around with it a bit or go to a bookstore and find a Premiere for Dummies-type book. I still have no idea how I'm going to do stuff like match beats -- the waveform for my song basically looks like a solid wall, due to the heavy guitars.
Well, there goes my weekend. I'm posting this to keep me motivated -- it would be all too easy for me to give up, especially with the absence of instant gratification. Also my cat was really upset that I was ignoring him last night (or maybe he was just sick of hearing the same song over and over while I was fiddling around in Audacity). I'll have to come up with ways to reward myself for incremental progress and reward my cat for his patience and understanding.
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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Anyway, I finally posted that snippet you asked for some time ago; hope you like it!
Ooh, snippet! That will be my first reward. Okay, actually my second (I just went out & bought some ice cream).
Make sure you take your time finding the right clips; I understand that this is a very important part of the process. You may even have to watch the whole thing all over again!
My problem during clipping is how I keep finding clips that are perfect for a vid other than the one I'm making. For example, my current project is not the project I started clipping for; dunno if I'll ever get back to that one.
Also, it's a lot harder to get drawn into rewatching an episode if you delete its audio track first.
And I'll try watching the episodes with the volume muted - thanks!
Solving things like "aspect ratio" and "why the fuck isn't the video importing properly?" and "what's a codec anyway?" are totally the hardest parts of learning to vid, precisely because it takes a lot of work just to learn the vocabulary and the skills to know how to diagnose a problem when it arises. I'd offer help, but I'm on a mac, so can't really help you with Premiere. But I do recommend
Seriously, though, welcome. :) Don't give up - it's a pain in the ass right now, but once you get your first vid made, I promise that the high is worth it.
Edited 2009-08-22 08:27 pm (UTC)
I'd been casually reading some vidding tech/software stuff for a while, so I have a basic vocabulary, but it's like that time that I spontaneously decided to learn German from finding a discarded textbook. So I'm going with the immersion approach. But at least I'd already picked up enough of the lingo & concepts not to give up before getting started.
And I count you and
Weird about Adobe. My Adobe Premiere Pro doesn't like avis but it's fine with mp3s.
BTW, you do have to choose an aspect ratio when you start but you can change it - you can create a new project with a new aspect ratio, and then import your old project into the new one, the same way you would import a clip.
I've been using Premiere for a couple of years now and I totally could use a For Dummies book - it's ridiculous, how little I can do!
Re beats - I don't know how others do it, maybe there's a better way, but I just listen closely to the sng and tap a marker at each beat (it's a little white symbol that sits on the timeline). Then when you add your clips, you line them up with the markers.
Anyhoo - have fun!
I haven't actually tried to do anything with the imported avis in Adobe yet; I was just happy that they treated them as video files after my WMM experience. But I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I tried doing something like marking the beats (at least with the cursor) in Audacity for where I wanted to cut, but I kept tapping too late, so I just did the cutting by hand. I'll try again in Premiere though -- maybe it's one of those hand/eye (or hand/ear) coordination things that I just need to practice at.
Thanks again! ;)
*admires, rather* I'm a coward on the topic of vidding. :)
cries of despairprogress reports along the way.My current dilemma is about clipping -- specifically, whether I should clip everything I might possibly use (and run the risk of being overwhelmed by too many options when I start working on the timeline), or just clip the scenes that I know I want to use (with the risk that I won't have enough and will have to go back and do another round). I'm leaning towards overclipping, but I'm not sure how I should organize the clips so that they're easy to manage.
I figure that I'll want to sort them by character, whether they're close-ups or full body or something in between, whether there's movement, and maybe something about mood/emotion, because those would be the main things that I'd be considering for a storyboard. But I'd love to benefit from the experience of other vidders in how they manage/organize/categorize their clips! Especially since I don't have the kind of fannish photographic memory/total recall to say, hey, I need a clip of character A laughing, that was halfway through episode 7 of season 3, etc.
You can always go back and get more later -- and you almost certainly will.
When I started, I used a spreadsheet where I put the lyrics down one column and the scenes in the next, and I would grab all of those clips. My early vids would wind up about 75% from the spreadsheet and 25% replacements or new things I discovered I needed. But it's a great way to start: keeps you organized and on task, and it's much less overwhelming than spending days and days clipping and winding up with a huge bin of clips to sort through.
As far as clip bin organization, for me it totally depends on the vid I'm making. It's really a two-part process: clip naming, and clip binning.
For naming, you need to come up with a system that works for you, regardless of what may seem to make logical sense. For instance, "Sarah runs R to L.avi" may be extremely logical for a fast-paced, motion-oriented vid, but if your vid is highly contextual, it helps you not at all. Anything you can put in the filename to help you remember context *and* movement/camera position is going to be useful, but I would always default to including character name and contextual info: sarah_deadderek.avi. If you have that, just seeing the clip name will help you remember not only what the clip is about, but what kind of motion there is in it -- because you'll be able to see it in your head.
Then there's binning, which I set up according to how I'm going to structure the vid. For instance, "Mothership" has bins like "Doctor", "Companions", "Aliens", and "Earth". "They Don't Know," although it uses the same show source, has bins like "Doctor", "Rose", "Together", "Smiling", and "Running". For me it works best to think structurally with the bins rather than trying to identify more detail. I like fewer bins and more descriptive clip names, but your mileage may vary.
Seriously, this is perfect advice, and the kind of stuff that I haven't seen people talk about much. You're the best! ♥
Any other process-related questions, I'm happy to answer.