Editing For the Rough Cut

I am using Final Cut Express to edit my video, which is useful because I had previously used it for my animatic and the editing of that video. However, editing video was not as simple as putting photos in order, it required time and patience in order for the video to look exactly how I intended it to look.

This screen was to select the files which contained different lengths and scenes of film in which I had recorded myself. I could rename these clips so I could save time and prevent flicking through all the clips to find to one individual scene which I wanted. Once selected the scene would appear on the middle screen of the three, as seen below. Here I could, play, mark in and out, rewind and fast forward to places that I wanted to see, within the clip. This was also controlled by a little yellow triangle. 

The picture above shows all of the programs that open when "Final Cut Express" is opened. There is the "clip screen" on the far left, the "clip play back" in the middle and the "video play back"on the right. Below these screens is the timeline and the bars which contain the frames and the sound. The video is displayed as blue bars and the sound is displayed as green bars.

 Above shows the two "play back screens". The screen on the left contains markers that "mark in" and "mark out" within the clip so you can select the frame you want to use or cut, in order to place into the video. The screen on the right simply shows the video playing and shows what is in the timeline at that time.

 Editing Sound

These "sliders" and they help to place the frame you want when you put it into the timeline (see picture below). The first slider on the left is called a "mark in" and tells you when you want the frame to begin and the slider on the right is called "mark out" and shows when the frame will end.

The little yellow triangle shows where in the clip it is playing, along the area that you have marked in and out, however, it can also show where in the whole of the clip selected it is playing.

Once I selected the area of frame that I wanted to put into my film I simply dragged the frame onto the time line and it looked something like this. (see above). The camera I used had a microphone on it and so recorded a lot of background noise and instruction that I was giving to the actors during filming. The sound can be seen as the light green bars. The longest bar was my soundtrack and I did not want to delete that therefore I "locked it" in place, by locking this I was able to delete all other sound that I did not require (this can be seen above as the shorter green bars below a short frame I added into the timeline).

Locking the bars simply was then showed by diagonal stripes that went across the bars to show that they were safe from deletion or any more changes being made to that bar. Next all I had to do was highlight the bit I did not want and then delete it from the timeline. 

To ensure that I would also not lose my other works, such as the frame that I had just added in I needed to lock that frame specifically as the sound and picture frame was joint together. Once the video frames had been locked the sound was clear to delete. Then, once deleted I could unlock the video frame and begin to add in more frames to the timeline.

The symbol seen on the very far left resembles a lock, when opened (as is above) the bars are not locked.

The symbol seen again on the far left is the lock however, this time the lock is closed and the stripes have appeared over the frames, this lets me know that the frames are locked.

Putting in a transition between slides

When adding in an effect in between two different frames, you first had to have the two frames, side by side along the bar track. Then click in between the two slides where they join and a brown bar as seen below appears and and then you are able to add in an effect.

Seen below shows the process of how you can add in a transition or effect. First simply go to "Effects" and then "Video Transitions", and from there you can choose from a variety of options to suit what transition you want to put into the sequence. 

Once selected it put the the transition in for you and the two frames become highlighted and you can see that there has been a new addition of a transition.

 

This is what it looks like close up and it even shows the gradient in which it develops (shown by the two central dark grey peaks) and what type of transition it is.