Apocalypse West on the Mac and PC digital editing process
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| Title: | Apocalypse West on the Mac and PC digital editing process |
| Creator: | Apocalypse West (Dianne and Val) |
| Date(s): | April 18 2001 or earlier |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | vidding |
| External Links: | Apocalpyse West Vidding Home Page, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Apocalypse West on the Mac and PC digital editing process is an early 2001 website post outlining the digital vidding workflow of two members of the Apocalypse West vidding group: Dianne and Val. It also briefly touches on the similarities and differences between analog (VCR videotape) and computer video editing and the challenges of offering digital vids for downloads when modems and download speeds were limited.
The website is divided into two sections: PC (Windows) and Macintosh computers.
Windows Excerpt:
Computer vidding -- specifically: computer vidding on a PC -- can be summed up thusly: When it is good, it is very very good! And when it is bad, it sucks very dead rodents through one of those really twisty character straws. :-pThe best part comes if you are a control freak like me: You can (and do) edit scenes frame-by-frelling-frame. You can stretch or compress scenes for effects or just to fit [i.e., Buffy cries just the right length of time, and at 94% speed, no one can even tell you messed with it! :)] You can mess with things, replace shots, move shots, tweak, test out, try out, and play around to your heart's content in real time with the soundtrack and with no generational loss of video!
Ideal, right?
Well, yes. Once you get to that point.
- Costs of computers and capture cards
- Editing software
- Assembling the above and testing
- Device conflicts and drivers
- Installation challenges
Once all set up and working, it's a joy! [Kinda like childbirth, that way, I've been told: You're so delighted with the end product that you immediately start to forget just how much pain and effort was involved in getting there! ;-)] Vidding then goes something like this:1) Have evil thought while listening to song. Realize it could work....
2a) Sit down with printed lyrics and scribble scene notes for each line, idea, or segment.
b) Play song over and over on tape in car on way to work. Plan out ideas in head.
3) Spend a few hours grabbing appropriate clips from tapes to hard drive, making sure you balance the huge file sizes against making sure you have enough of the scene.
4) Edit song as appropriate, then open it in Premiere. Start playing it and putting markers at appropriate beats and clip-change points.
5) Open the video clips in Premiere and start drag-n-dropping 'em to their place on the timeline. Use the nifty trimmer window to trim them down to just the bits you need (frame-by-frame! :)
6) Play!
a) When it doesn't quite fit, clip, stretch, speed, and tweak it until it does.
b) When the scene isn't filmed quite the way you want it, re-edit it......
c) Decide that that clip fits better in the third chorus anyway, and drag it out of the way until you get there. Repeat above with different clip for first chorus line.
d) Decide you don't like anything there right at the moment and put a full-screen-color spacer block there until you feel more brilliant.
e) Keep playing it in the Preview window to see how it's working. (Don't try to compile it -- even in pieces! -- as you go. Much too much time and hard-drive space for no reason.) .....
7) Run it all for yourself. Disclaimer blanks spaces, then run it for your roomies. Provide running commentary of planned changes. Bask in admiration of roomies. :)
8) Sleep.
9) Repeat #6 the next night, changing, adjusting, adding, and subtracting.
10) Repeat #s 6 through 8 until all the blank spaces are non-blank and it all works.
11) Set the thing to compile overnight (2-3 hours).
12) Check in the morning. Note extra frames. Curse. Re-adjust clip ends in timeline. Set to re-compile while at work. Repeat until get a clean version. [Eventually realize you can 'lock' the clips in place before compiling and avoid all frame-drift that way - Doh!]
13) Export as .mov file.
14) Bask in admiration of fellow vidders!
[15) Curse because you still haven't gotten the export-to-tape set-up to really work...]
Summary: Totally different experience. Just as much trouble, just with the trouble and the play parts split up into chunks instead of happening simultaneous. (Right, tape-vidders? :)
Macintosh excerpt:
First and foremost: read the documentation. If you've read it already, read it again. Pay close attention to the boring bits......Unutterably dumb mistakes on my first vid that could have been avoided by reading the documentation included:
1. The biggie: I did all my source clip captures through the wrong card. All of 'em. We didn't even know that card (a weird off-brand we bought a couple years back to replace the system's original display card when it went kerplooie) could accept video input. ....
2. Compiled output-to-tape version at wrong compression. Card not happy. Gobbledygook on tape.
3. Compiled output-to-tape version at 30 fps instead of 29.97. See #1 re: spasmodic crap.
4. Captured source clips at 30 fps instead of 29.97 (discovered this was a problem at the same time as #3). Fortunately, this was less of a problem, as Premiere allows you to conform a clip to whatever frame rate you want without having to redo the capture. Very very useful tool.
Things I learned from trial and error more than from documentation: 1. Make sure you have all the available hard disk space you can get your hands on. ...
It's also important for playback of the full-size version to tape.....
You need lots of space for storing source clips during the editing process, of course; but for this purpose the speed aspect is less important. ....
2. Work in 320x240 rather than 640x480. The latter is video standard, but unless your source clips are really pristine (which mine so very weren't) and you're trying to keep that quality, you're not really going to see a difference on the screen, and you'll save a ton of compiling time and file space.
3. Premiere's documentation says you can output to tape in the Preview window of your Project, but it doesn't say that the results aren't very impressive. In fact, I didn't find the Preview window very useful at all. .....
Oh, and a note about sharing vids online: It's a pain in the tuckus. A big one. I understand now why more people don't do it. I had no idea that putting a 30MB QuickTime file out there for people to check out would be so frelling hard, but it was. In the case of my first vid, the lovely and generous Stephanie Kellerman, keeper of the Forever Knight FTP archive, has volunteered to host it after my search for a suitable free file server met with only limited success. ......However, it is still 30MB, and thus takes forever to download on anything slower than a cable modem. I have been experimenting with both RealPlayer and QuickTime files to see if I can get it to a more manageable size and still be able to tell what the heck it is when it's played; so far I haven't been very successful. If I can pull it off, tho, mayhaps we can start showing off some of our vids here.