Boy! Really big week this week with not just lots of exciting news but quite an array of tip and tricks for your video editing projects.
Leading off this week is some very tasty news from CyberLink:
CyberLink Director Suite Coming
Well it’s about that time of year again where a few of the major video editing software companies are due to release updates, upgrades and other upnesses.
First cab off the rank seems to be CyberLink and it seems they have a rather big rebranding exercise on their hands.
What they appear to be doing is finally beginning an alignment of their separate products under one basic banner which is a good thing.
What many (too many by their estimation!) people don’t realize is that Cyberlink have been developing a kind of “pseudo” pro level of products to their stable.
If you look at the development of PowerDirector there is probably not much room for expansion inside it without a complete reconstruction of the program which might jeopardize their existing client base.
So what’s a company to do? Well what they are doing is introducing a range of complementary products that expand beyond what you can already do within PowerDirector.
They have spun the audio part of the program out into a separate program called AudioDirector and the image editing part of the program out into PhotoDirector.
Finally they have added a new program called ColorDirector which brings color correction and grading to the whole shebang.
Put them alltogether in one suite and you have the new CyberLink Creative Director Suite.
Each one is a pretty awesome as a standalone yet they can all operate as a single integrated unit within the Creative DirectorSuite banner.
I will have more about this later in the week and I think they are offering me freebies to give away so stay tuned!
Interviews
Many people as home movie makers may not think of interviews as being part of what they will do within their projects. But think about this.
What if you knew at least some of the basics for setting up an interview video and you started interviewing the kids, your parents, your grandparents…. all sorts of people in your life or in the life around you.
What an amazing archive of footage you could create that would be simply fascinating to someone in the future. I think that would be pretty cool!
- 5 Simple Tips to Produce a Great Interview Video
A $5.00 Camera Stabilizer!
Well you certainly can’t beat the price! This is a three part series on how to build your own handheld camera stabilizer and I can’t emphasize enough just how important something like this is becoming.
The current crop of HD enabled recording devices achieve their image quality by compressing the files they capture enormously.
The result of this is that motion can become a problem for the camera to represent effectively. The less unwanted motion you put in (camera shake) the better the result you will get.
DSLR Camera Stabilizer for Under $5 (Part 1 of 3)
DSLR Camera Stabilizer for Under $5 (Part 2 of 3)
DSLR Camera Stabilizer for Under $5 (Part 3 of 3)
Playing to the Sound of Crickets Chirping
One of the great difficulties these days in creating video projects and getting them online is trying to fight through all the noise to get someone to see it! In the past there were many sneaky tips and tricks you could apply to force the search functions within services like YouTube to present your videos to a potential audience.
These days most of those tricks have not effect at all. So just how do you get your videos seen by more than just your immediate family and friends? In the following article there are some excellent tips on getting your videos presented to a greater number of potential viewers:
Audio Recording Tips
OK this is a great tips from the guys at TheBasicFilmaker channel on Youtube. You can actually use the ear buds that come with an iPhone a a lapel microphone using the iPhone or even iPod as a remote recording device.
According to one of the comments posted on the site you can also do this with a Samsung Galaxy S4.
A Little History Lesson
It’s easy to take the modern crop of video editors for granted especially when you don’t really know just how things have changed.
This is a really good article outlining the history of editing and goes a long way in explaining where we were, where we are and how we got here! I can recall a forum entry a few years back from a lady that had been an editor in the 50’s in Hollywood.
She had just discovered the world of non-linear editing and even at the consumer level was astounded by what could be achieved on the average home computer by anyone will to learn.
Hi! I’m from Microsoft and I’m Here to Help!
Warning! This message was posted on the muvee blog regarding a problem some users may be experiencing with their software.
The problem itself seems to be that half of the preview screen is turned black when viewing a video or project. The problem has been traced to a Windows update (gee thanks Microsoft!) but unfortunately is not limited to just muvee products.
If you have suddenly begun experiencing something like this in your editing software, check out the post to see if it is being caused by the same thing.
YouTube Buffering
OK this is cool! I have searched for something like this for ages but never really found anything yet today it appeared! Ever wanted to buffer a YouTube video because it was streaming wrong or you were having trouble with your internet connection? Here ya go!
Transitions!
One of my pet peeves when it comes to choosing video editing software is the emphasis people place on the number of or range transition available in the programs they are looking at.
Most people “think” this is somehow important but have no idea why they think that way!
The reason is that the marketing of software requires that you be dazzled somehow with features that are totally awesome and filled with all that awesome you hit the “buy” button! This is rubbish!
If you look at a movie or even a T.V. series you will see that 90% of the transitions between scenes consist of straight cuts (no transition actually), cross fades and fades to or from black. Anything else is a rarity.
To really understand transitions at their deepest level and how you don’t need all that crap, check out this article:
Moving Pictures
I really like this article! Too often we seem to get caught up in the technology of shooting and editing our videos.
Always searching for some elusive gadget or technique or tip or trick that will somehow make what we are doing look better. More often than not if we just spent a little more time on getting our basics right then we wouldn’t be searching for those things. Shooting videos is actually just shooting high speed photos!
Instead of shooting one image at a time we are generally shooting 25 per second! Given that fact I think one of the best ways to improve your videography is to improve your photography:
Gripps Comes Through!
Ah the ever reliable Gripps strikes again. This week he shows us how you can transition from the main video track to whatever you have loaded into the overlay track.
VideoStudio Pro x6 Transition from Main Track to Overlay Track
Director School on Vimeo
Often we think of a “Director” as someone that would be taking charge of some huge multi-million dollar Hollywood production or at least some kind of professional endeavour.
However as amatuer video enthuiasts the role of the director does not just disappear.
It just happens to fall under the huge bunch of stuff that we are already doing as the camera man, the lighting director, props and even catering! It can be worth your time to take a role like that of the director, isolate it and examine what it is they are really doing.
By isolating tasks and responsibilities you can raise your own awareness of things that you may be missing or forgetting to do that could very well improve your own projects.
Press Conference Tips
This is a cool little tutorial on how you can convincingly re-create the look of a press conference without a huge budget or a cast of thousands!
Whew! That’s a lot of stuff!
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