BTEC CREATIVE MEDIA
Video Editing – the technical stuff
A note before we start on ORGANISATION On the computer, when you are creating projects, YOU MUST be organised! Get used to creating a clear organisation of folders on the hard drive and bins in the Premiere project window for all the different elements of your project – visuals (organised by shoot), music, foley sounds, graphics etc. All should be organised carefully both in your folder in the Movies folder on the Mac HD and within your project. We will be assessing your editing ability partly on how you organise your files. Part of this organisation is also about UNDERSTANDING VIDEO FILES AND OTHER FILES (EG GRAPHICS, MUSIC) FROM A TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE. This sheet gives you that information.
Aspect Ratios The ASPECT RATIO is the width in relation to the height of a video. Old style TVs were 4:3. Newer TVs are wider-screen, often 16:9. Movies at the cinema are wider still.
Video Sizes DVD video is usually 720x576 pixels. The pixel count of HD (HIGH DEFINITION) video is usually 1280x720 (known as 720), or 1920x1080 (known as 1080) – that’s the Bluray standard. Obviously the bigger the numbers here, the bigger the file size for storage on your computer. Most of our camcorders shoot in 1080.
Frame Rate and Progressive/Interlaced Video When you set a camcorder or DSLR camera to shoot video, you’ll often have a series of ‘video quality’ settings to choose from. You’ll see, for example, 720:50p or 1080:25i etc. The first of these numbers is the video size, as above. The second number is the FRAME RATE – ie how many frames there are per second (fps). The higher this number the better the video will be at showing fast movement without it becoming a mushy blur, and the better it will be if you want to shoot slow motion. The ‘P’ or ‘i’ designation is about how the frames are shown. Progressive scan (‘p’) shows every frame one after the other. ‘Interlaced’ scan shows half the frame at any one moment, and