|
Written by phoenix
|
|
Sunday, 16 March 2008 |
These are things that I wish I had been aware of when I was just starting out. These are my lessons learned.
1. Overly long clips. Generally anything over about 8 seconds is too long. This is not always the case. There are times when a clip may be over 8 seconds but not seem like it due to the pace of the action. Conversely, there may be a good time to use a long, more dramatic clip uncut. A timing rule of thumb I like to use is to not exceed one lyrical line.
2. Clips where the actors are speaking when there are no words in that portion of the music. This can be distracting, especially in a long instrumental sequence or an instrumental song. It is more noticable in a close up shot. Granted this is not always avoidable, but it should be minimized.
3. Overuse of effects. Generally you shouldn't use more than a couple of transition types, and either a straight cut or basic fade works well in most cases. Too many fancy overlaps and it looks a little like a cheesy homemade wedding video (apologies to those that love the heart transition). Look at TV and movies, generally fades, also known as dissolves, and wipes are the most commonly used.
4. Ghost frames. I mentioned them up above. Sometimes when you cut a clip, you end up with an extra frame. This shows up as a flash in the video. Sometimes I can only see this when I render the final project. I do an initial render at 256 kbps to check the integrity of the video without having to take hours to render the high quality version. I also recommend zooming in on the editing line and going frame by frame across the clip transitions. This catches most, but not all of the ghost frames. Another way to minimize their affect is to use dissolves. If you just can't get rid of one, it becomes less noticeable.
5. Mixing aspect ratios. If you're not sure what this means, check out this great article by Brent Barrett that explains this and shows examples. This is not a hard and fast rule, but many of us vidders are of the opinion that if the entire video is in the same aspect ratio it looks more professional. Some editors make it easy to stretch 16:9 widescreen clips to a 4:3 view, though this will stretch the video, while others do not. In some editors it is easy to do your own pan and scan to 4:3 or crop seasons 1-3 to widescreen format. From speaking with other vidders each software does it differently or not at all. If you are using WMM2, I would suggest using VirtualDub to pan and scan the clips. (Link points to Brent Barrett's tutorial on ripping that has some instructions on using VD)
|
