Computer Movie Editing : Key Facts You Need To Know To Get Started
With the massive increase in computer processing power, broadband Internet connections and popular video website like YouTube.com more and more people are looking to develop their skills in computer movie editing.
Film editing software allows everyday users to quickly and cost effectively start editing their own movies, in the comfort of their own home. If a little time it taken to learn more about movie editing you could be producing surprisingly professional looking movies very quickly.
This article is for anyone who is looking to get started in computer movie editing but is confuses as to where to start. It will look at the 3 most important elements you need to know, as well as introduce you to the vocabulary of the digital movie editing world. Armed with this knowledge you'll be in a good position to start moving forward and developing some deeper learning and understanding on this subject.
Equipment First off you'll need some basic equipment. You'll need a method of capturing a video image. Depending on what you intend to use the equipment will dictate this. Videos or movies that are published online tent to be short and lower quality so a webcam, or digital camera would be fine. For higher quality movies you'll probably need a digital camcorder. The second piece of equipment you'll need is a computer. As I write this article most new personal computers on the market have more than enough processing power to handle video editing requirements. The key though is to have plenty of RAM and disk storage, particularly if you want to work with high quality and longer movies as these will take up more of the computer's memory. Anything over 1GB of RAM and 120GB hard disk space is fine to get started. You can always upgrade your RAM or buy and external hard disk as you passion for movie editing takes off. Finally you'll need some decent video editing software. There are thousands of titles on the market across a full range of prices. Most digital cameras and camcorders also come bundled with some basic editing software, this will be free and well worth using as a starting point. So that's the pieces of equipment you'll need to get started. Next we'll look at some for the file types that are used in video editing. Files Types The most common types of files are AVI (Audio Video Interleave) and MOV (QuickTime Move Clip). AVI files tend to be used on PCs and MOV file tend to be used on Macintosh's. Both file types are using compression algorithms to help keep the file size as small and compact as possible. Most common software packaged will allow you to work with multiple file types and other popular file extensions that you might come across are MPEGs or WMF (windows media format). File types is a huge subject in its self, but in overview if you're working with a PC you'll most likely work with AVI files. If you're working with a Mac your most likely work with MOV file types. As with most subjects, movie editing has some words or specialist vocabulary that you should understand. I'll cover some of the basics next. Video and Movie Editing Buzz Words Being able to understand the local lingo is a great help when traveling abroad. The same holds true when you are learning about a new industry or topic and movie editing is no different. The most important words you should know are: Frame A frame is the single lowest form of video capture. Each frame is actually a static picture. It is only through showing 1000s of frames in quick succession that a movie looks like a movie. Shot A shot is a snippet of video or video and sound taken from your video recording device. The shot is normally fairly short and is the basis for constructing a scene in your movie or short film. Time Lines Time line are basically a number of shot edit together into a longer movie or film. Time lines contain a number of shots that have been edited and tidied up. Transitions Transitions link shots and times together. There are dozens of type of transitions. The picture can fade to black and then fade back in again with a new shot. A new shot might role in from the left, right of the screen, this in known as a wipe. Finally the image might dissolve from one to another. However you move between shots it's important to do it with elegance. Transitions help you do just that and help make the movie watching experience more entertaining for the viewer. Now you have a idea of some of the basic terms using in the video editing business. In summary we've looked at some of the equipment you need to get started. You'll need a method of video capture, a half decent computer and finally some editing software. We then went on to look at the types of files you'll be working with before finally looking at some of the terminology around movie and film editing. The aim of this article was to help you build a foundation for learning more about computer movie editing. I'm sure you know there is a lot more to learn on this subject and to help you get started my advice to would be to simple give it a go. Take a video. Download it to you computer, start up your editing software and start having fun!
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