Editing Lesson Blog

Editing Lesson Blog

          So today the whole class learned how to edit footage using an editing software called Pinnacle Studios. I already know how to edit since I have Sony Vegas Pro 17 at home, but I am unable to use it for this project. In this blog I'm going to talk about what our teacher taught us. First our teacher taught us how to 'dump' our footage onto our computers. We have to make a personal folder dedicated to this project on our school desktop. Then we plug in our SD card reader in to the computer. The SD card reader already has our SD card and footage in it. We then highlight all of our footage and drag it on to our folder in the desktop. This whole process is dumping. The definition our teacher taught us for dumping is, "transferring footage from our SD card or camera onto the computer via a personal folder."

          Now we finally get into the actual editing software. Our computers don't have it right now, but the will eventually have an icon for Pinnacle Studios, the software we are using. I have never heard of it before, but we our teacher opened it up it looked very similar to Sony Vegas Pro 17. It only had more lag and less features the Vegas, but I guess I will have to make do. Anyways, back on topic. Once we open up Pinnacle Studios, we have to make sure we are on the 'Edit' tab. There also may be a sample or preview video loaded in Pinnacle Studios. Our teacher said that it was there to attempt to teach new users the various ways to edit videos. If the preview is there, we simply just have to hit 'File' and 'New Movie' in order to get a fresh, clean slate. The first then we have to do to start editing is to import the footage from the folder into the editing software. Click the check-mark next to desktop, find the folder and the footage, then click start import.

          When that is done, we can see our raw footage in the top right of the software. Raw footage is the actual takes taken by the camera. Raw footage has no editing done to it. That includes any cuts, speed ups, slow mo, and etc.... Then we highlight the raw footage to put into track 2 in the order we want. The tracks have specific things that will go into them. Track 1 will have the titles. Track 2 will have the footage. Track 3 will have the music. And Track 4 will have the voice overs. After that we can edit all we want. We can add special effects, transitions, cut our footage, reverse our footage, and so much more. I will go more into detail in my next blog when I do the actual editing. When we are done editing we will save the project onto our folder. When we are done with all the editing, we will export it as a MPEG4 file under SD best quality settings. When we export a project, it renders it so all flows nicely as a coherent movie.