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Digital Video - Getting it in…

To listen to some people talk, you’d think that getting video into your PC was hard. It isn’t – not at all. Let’s take Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker as an example. Here’s how you’d go about producing a short, three-clip movie:

Step 1.

Open up Movie Maker, making sure that you’ve already attached your DV Camera to your FireWire card and switched it on – you can check that all is OK by looking in “My Computer”, where the DV Camera will be shown alongside any other imaging devices and storage you have.

Step 2

Click on <File><Record> and a dialogue box will open up – here you have three choices. The most useful is the bottom one – "use default recording device" – which is your DV Cam. The top option allows you to simply record to hard disk anything and everything that’s on the tape – and it even rewinds it to the beginning for you.

Step 3.

Choose “record from current position”. You’ll note that there is a full control bar that allows you to control your DV Cam from the PC. You simply use the controls to position the tape to a point just before you want to start recording, and then click the <record> button. Movie Maker will record from there until you press <stop> (the same button) – it doesn’t notice when the tape has reached the end. There’s no need to worry about splitting the recording into separate clips – Movie Maker can sense when the scene changes, and will automatically split the recording into “clips” for you.

Step 4.

Now that the clips are in your “library”, it’s time to arrange them on the storyboard in  the order you want them to appear in the finished movie. Of course, they don’t have to be in chronological order – and its as well to audition each one first by dragging it from the library pane into the viewing pane. While the clip is being viewed, you can set the start and end points, as well – useful for getting rid of any strange looking moments. If the need really arises, you can also split the clip into smaller clips.

Step 5.

With the clips inserted into the storyboard, you should now switch to Timeline mode and drag the start of clip 2 just slightly over the end of clip 1 – that will form a basic Transition, where clip 1 fades into clip 2 – what’s known as a dissolve in videographic terminology. The length of time the dissolve takes is governed by how far the two clips overlap – too short and your audience will become confused, too long and they’ll be even more confused. Generally, it’s best to aim for a no more than three seconds for a dissolve.

Step 6.

Once you have set up all your transitions – and there’s nothing wrong with a plain cut (where one scene stops and another starts abruptly – think Top of the Pops as a TV program than uses lots and lots of very fast cuts to see what I mean) – you’re ready to “produce” your movie. That means compiling it – making all the clips, effects and other clever bits blend into one smooth, seamless finished article. Movie Maker refers to this as “saving” the movie, and it’s at this point you need to decide on exactly what quality level you’re aiming for.

Since Movie Maker is aimed at online delivery mechanisms, and works in the Windows Media format, you can’t output to DV tape – you’re effectively looking at a Web page, or CD delivery. So, you must now choose what data rate you want the movie to be saved at. As a rough guide, choose the lowest data rate that your viewers are likely to be using – it it’s a Web based movie, that’s  going to be a connection speed of 28.8kbps. If, on the other hand, you’re going to write a CD to send to family and friends, then you can choose a much higher data rate – go for higher quality.

Then, click “save” and go and put the kettle on. It can take some time to compile the movie – an hour’s worth of video will take at least 75 minutes, depending on how many clips you have, how many transitions and so on.

And that’s about it. Once the movie is saved, you can put it on your website, write it to CD, or email it (if you really want to lose friends). It’s all very simple.

Read part one

Read part three