Australian film - Federation of Australian Movie Makers

So You Want To Edit Your Video?
ften during my term as president of Newcastle Video
O Moviemakers I would receive a phone call telling me the
caller had just purchased a video camera and asking if I could
recommend an editing program for them to buy.
Video editing can be a great hobby/pastime/business.
However it does require a lot of time and patience and quite
frankly, it doesn’t suit everybody - as does fishing, bowling,
hang-gliding etc.
For this reason I don’t like seeing would-be editors spend a
significant amount of money on an untried hobby. Nor do I
like discouraging their aspirations.
Buying the best editing program won’t make you a good editor
or produce a great film!
The second question asked is, “Well, what program do you
use?”
In 1996 when real-time editing was almost a dream, our company
was contracted to produce a set of over 20 training videos
for a major state training provider. For speed, it was decided
to update the editing program and computer. Back then
the cost was about half of the cost of a recently purchased
four-wheel-drive vehicle. It is unlikely that a purchase such as
this would be good advice for someone starting up.
I might add that these days the same quality editing can be
carried out for about the cost of four tyres on the same fourwheel-drive.
A sensible recommendation for anyone wanting to try editing
is to use Windows Movie Maker. This comes bundled free
and is usually installed with Windows XP. It is also available
as a free download from the Microsoft website:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/
moviemaker2.mspx
Vista users (Home Premium and Ultimate Versions) have the
added advantage of a High Definition version of the same
program. Unfortunately the Vista version doesn’t appear to
run under XP!
When it comes to using Movie Maker the hardest part is finding
where it is hidden! See diagram below.
Once the program is started, four panes, shown here as
broken blue lines, are presented. Each of these panes is
re-sizeable.
The left top pane contains the tasks or things you might
wish to do. By expanding the buttons and sliding the
side bar down, a comprehensive set of instructions can
be accessed on how to achieve these tasks.
The centre top pane contains your choice of either: a
selection of the clips, slides or music that you have imported;
a set of effects that can be applied to your video,
such as old movie, sepia, slow motion, fade in/out; or a
group of transitions. Transitions are a way of joining
two scenes together and should be used as a tool and for
a reason, more so than an attempt to embellish a video.
The right top pane contains a preview of the project.
The lower pane is where the creativity takes place. Five
tracks are available: video; transition; audio (from the
video); audio (music or commentary) and a title overlay.
While the program is limited to one line of video and
one line of audio; this will be enough for starting out.
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Click: Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows
MovieMaker
Australian film & video
To expand capabilities Microsoft have free ‘Funpack’
downloads of theme titles and music:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/
mmcreate.mspx
These are normally downloaded to: ‘My Documents >
My Videos’.