The first thing to note for this week’s Friday Roundup is that as far as content goes we are a little thin on the ground here!
Most of this week has been taken up with endless Black Friday and Cyber Monday “buy my stuff” articles.
By now you have probably gathered that I don’t really get too much into the buy, buy, buy frenzy that seems to occur at this time every year.
So if you see something you NEED at a good price at the moment great!
If not then just carry on as if nothing happened.
Fair warning though… the Christmas Sales insanity is just over the horizon.
Anyway, on with the show!
How To Design a Small Space YouTube Filming Backdrop
If you are regularly posting YouTube content of the type involving yourself on camera then there are some great tips here for lifting your game.
The reality is that “talking heads” videos are very popular and as such the competition for views is pretty brutal.
The only way to compete in this space is to be as good as if not better than the competition.
Obviously you need good content that appeals to the market your are aiming at and yes you need good audio and video quality.
One way to stand out from the crowd that you may not have thought of is the overall “look” of your videos.
A great deal of this “look” will be what is in the background and how that background is presented.
4 Editing Techniques to Add Drama to a Cut
Interesting article this week from Film Editing Pro on the subject of adding drama to a sequence in a video.
Now obviously these techniques may not seem all that applicable to your kids birthday party video but bear with me here!
One of the main reasons pro videos look “pro” and amateur videos look amateur is this.
Regardless of whether you are intending it or not, there are certain visual “rules” or cues that are in play when an audience is watching a video.
A pro is aware of this and uses those rules to intentionally create an effect.
The amateur is generally unaware of those rules and usually ends up creating unintended effects most of which are not appropriate to the project.
It is just as important to know what NOT to do as it is to knowing what to do.
Christmas Lights Long Exposure Shooting Tips
This more a series of experiments videoed while shooting some time lapse stuff at night and of Christmas lights.
There are some interesting techniques shown that create some great effects… with a couple of failures along the way!
Remove Objects From Videos in Filmora X
The title of this tutorial kind of suggests it is about removing objects from an existing video… that’s not what’s going on here.
The actual tutorial is for creating video in less than ideal conditions which may force you to have certain objects like lights or camera stands of whatever in the shot.
It then shows a simple way of compensating for that by overlaying another shot that does not contain those unwanted objects.
Watch the video and you will get the idea.
What’s New & FAQ – PowerDirector 365 Nov. 2020 Updates
For users of the subscription version of CyberLink PowerDirector there have been some recent updates as of November this year.
Just to clarify this, PowerDirector 365 is the subscription version that updates monthly with new stuff whereas PowerDirector 19 is the perpetual license option that updates annually.
So for this month they have added:
- My Favorites Category
Keep all of your favorite assets in one place and access them faster with the new My Favorites category.
- Media Downloads Folder
Keep track of recently added assets with a dedicated folder conveniently located within the Media Room.
- Intel Low Power Encoder with H.264 Compression
Optimized performance for H.264 encoding with reduced power consumption for Intel 11th Gen or above CPUs.
- Easily Add Effects or Transitions to Multiple Clips
You can now apply effects and transitions to multiple video clips at once with just a few clicks.
- Faster & More Responsive
Improved loading times for our most powerful tools and features to keep your edit moving at lightning speed.
- Control Object Size & Aspect Ratios
Enjoy precision control over size and aspect ratio of PiP objects or overlays to easily resize for the perfect fit.
PowerDirector – How to Locate Background Images in PD 19 / PD 365
Prior to the release of PowerDirector 19, when you opened the program the was a sub-folder in the Library called “Backgrounds.”
In that folder were some textured backgrounds that were mainly used for titling and a few other things.
With the release of PD 19 this folder disappeared.
This may have been due to an oversight with the update or may actually have been because their user data indicated the feature was not really being used very much.
So if you are someone who used them and have not been able to find them again then this video is for you!
The backgrounds are still part of the assets you get when you purchase the program, it’s just that they have been cleverly hidden away so you can’t find them!
How to Create a Flight Path Animation Using Sketch Designer – PowerDirector 19
This is a tutorial made by the guys at CyberLink showing how to create a flight path animation in PowerDirector.
If you can follow along and get the desired result then you are a better person than me!
Anyway, I have included it in this week’s Roundup because there is a strong possibility that the problem with this video is me and not the video itself.
Video Inside Text in Resolve17
Just a run through of a cool little feature that was added to DaVinci Resolve 17.
Of course the ability to have video playing inside the text of a title was something you could always do in Resolve and most other video editing programs.
The problem was that you had to approach as an effect “process” involving quite a few steps.
DaVinci have picked up on the popularity and prevalence of the effect and have simply added an automated solution to the task as you can see in the video below.
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