Voyage into vidding of the damned

[crypto]

 I think I accidentally started to make a vid last night. With a song choice inspired by watching wrestling this week *facepalm*. Oh, and it's a shipper vid *headdesk* [nothing against shipper vids, it's just that I'm a total failure as a shipper so it's not exactly a "vid what you know" scenario for me]. So I ended up staying awake until 5:30 am. I have zero clips to show for it so far, but I did manage to edit the song down to two minutes! Which is still probably 90 seconds more ambitious than my concept, but maybe I can just string together a 30-second sequence of clips and repeat it a few times, right? Especially since I've now got a track with 2 verses and what feels like 8 repeats of the chorus. But it's a great chorus!

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.

Comments

[cofax7]

Well, go you! Good luck with it! I know there are lots of resources out there but I also know that I foundered and gave up the one time I tried vidding. My brain does not work the way the software works, I found.

Anyway, I finally posted that snippet you asked for some time ago; hope you like it!

[crypto]

Thanks! I'm also worried that my brain doesn't work according to the guiding metaphors of the software. I just want something like the technology in Minority Report where Tom Cruise's character can wave his hands around and make the images do what he wants!

Ooh, snippet! That will be my first reward. Okay, actually my second (I just went out & bought some ice cream).

[lo_rez]

OMG! This is fantastic!

[crypto]

This is totally your fault! I've been trying to come up with a ficlet idea for the next Sea Patrol prompt, and getting nowhere. So -- I hope this is okay with you -- I decided to try a vidlet instead.

[lo_rez]

AWESOME. (Also inspiring. I've had a totally legal copy of Final Cut Studio on my Mac for, like, over a year and have been too craven to try using it.)

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!

[crypto]

Ha! That's my biggest worry -- that I'll get so caught up in the episodes that I forget to keep an eye out for the right clips. I might end up with two minutes of a still screenshot. Though certain characters are so inherently AWESOME on their own and together that I could basically throw together anything with scenes either or both of them and it would get my point across, right?

[torachan]

I would totally make a vid if it didn't require going through the source and looking for clips. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

[crypto]

I'm going to see how much I can come up with from one 13-episode season, and maybe just start with a few episodes that center on the characters I'm interested in. My worry is that I'll keep forgeting my purpose and get drawn into just rewatching the episodes.

[thirdblindmouse]

My worry is that I'll keep forgeting my purpose and get drawn into just rewatching the episodes.

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.

[crypto]

I will totally be that vidder who thinks, "Well, this clip doesn't make any sense in the context of my vid, but it's so cool that I have to use it anyways!" :)

And I'll try watching the episodes with the volume muted - thanks!

[thingswithwings]

ONE OF US. welcome, brother. hope you didn't like whatever your other hobbies were, because you're a vidder now.

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 vidding, viddingnewbies and vidding_tech.

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.

[crypto]

Thanks, and I'll check out those comms!

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 futuransky as inspirations, because you were the first two people I saw go from non-vidder to vidder -- and make great stuff in the process. So thanks also for that!

[giandujakiss]

Good luck!!

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!

[crypto]

Thanks!

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! ;)

[anatsuno]

whoa! Good show! I mean, good on you for wading in courageously.

*admires, rather* I'm a coward on the topic of vidding. :)

[crypto]

Thanks, though I'm still very daunted! But also stubborn when it comes to not letting software get the best of me. And as I said to lo_rez above, it ultimately felt more attainable for me than writing a ficlet. *g*

[livrelibre]

Oooh, good luck! I've been thinking about trying to vid but haven't gotten the gumption or time yet. Let us know how it works out.

[crypto]

Thanks! For a long period, I lacked the gumption, and then more recently I lacked the time. There will probably be intermittent cries of despair progress reports along the way.

[laurashapiro]

I could not be more thrilled that you're doing this! I only wish I could give you tech help, but I'm on a Mac, so I'm kind of useless for you as far as software goes. I'm happy to answer any non-software-related questions, though!

[crypto]

Thank you, your support & encouragement mean a lot to me!

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.

[laurashapiro]

I would always advise a beginning vidder to start out only with the clips they know they want to choose. The faster you can get to laying down exactly what's in your head and feeling the emotional payoff of playing it in time with the music, the more rewarding the vidding experience will be for you.

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.

[crypto]

Wow, thank you, this is incredibly helpful! And exactly what I needed to hear to spare me hours and hours of pulling out my hair. My scalp also thanks you. :)

Seriously, this is perfect advice, and the kind of stuff that I haven't seen people talk about much. You're the best! ♥

[laurashapiro]

Oh, yay! I'm so glad it's useful for you! (:

Any other process-related questions, I'm happy to answer.