BASIC VIDEO EDITING IN FINAL CUT EXPRESS
created by Olga Kyle for Convergence 4802/4804

Capturing video

Now that you’ve shot your video, you need to get it inside your Final Cut Express (FCE) application. Bringing video from tape into FCE is called Capturing.

You will need a camera, a battery (or a power supply) and a FireWire Cable.

These cables will have this iconprinted on them.

Plug the small, 4-pin end into the camera (the slot is marked HDV/DV), and the large, 6-pin end into the computer.

Connect to ISIS. The application that allows you to do that is called Unity ISIS Client Manager. If it’s not on the Dock, then find it inside the computer’s Applications folder.

Launch ISIS, enter your username and password. The 4802 server will be listed in the application window. Click on MOUNT in the column to the left of the server name.

Turn the camera on, switch to Play/Edit mode.

Open FCE and create a New Project.

Choose the format (File, Easy Setup). You need DV NTSC Anamorphic. Below is the video that shows how to capture your project. Before you watch it, please note two important things:

1. Your format of choice will be DV NTCS Anamorphic

2. When you connect to ISIS, choose4802 AVID serveras your Scratch Disk and save your project in the folder with your Last name, First name (ex. Kyle,Olga) in 4802 AVID server.

You absolutely CANNOT use the classes server to save any videos other than your finished and compressed video for the web project.

Okay, now here is How to Capture:

Editing basics

Here is the video that explains how to edit:

And here is how to work with clips in the timeline:

Working with audio

Here is how to work with audio:

After you adjusted the volume levels, you will need to fix the Pan on your sequence audio (this is what makes your audio split evenly between two speakers and it sounds way better when you listen in headphones).

First,select all of your clips in the timeline (use Command A shortcut, or drag a box around all of your clips, use zoom slider to make the clips smaller if you’re selecting clips by dragging a box around them).

Then go to the top menu: Modify>Audio>Pan Center.

Exporting and Compressing

To export, select your sequence icon in Browser, go to File> Using Quick Time Conversion.

In the next window, choose Quick Time Movie and click on Options.

In the next window, make your Video, Size and Audio settings look like what you see here:

First, in Video category, you will need to change format Settings and Size. Click on “Settings” first.

Change it to DV/DVCPRO NTSC, keep the frame rate at current and change the quality to somewhere around “High” (you can go a little lower or higher than that depending on your project, but do not choose “Best”).

Change the aspect ratio to 16:9.
Click OK.

This will take you back to the Movie

Settings window and next you will need to change the size:
Choose CUSTOM and put in 480 and 320.
Click OK.

Now, you’re ready to export. It’s best to save your exported file on the desktop, because it’s easy to drag it from there into your next step: MPEG Streamclip application.

Open MPEG Streamclip and drag your Quick Time file into the center of the window.

Go to File> export as MPEG4.

In the next window,change the settings like so:

Note that you can go higher or lower with the quality setting.
Generally, you don’t need to go higher than about 80-85 percent for the class web video projects, but you also don’t want to go below 50 percent.

A lot of factors can influence the size of the video file, so there is no unique formula when it comes to compression for optimal size and quality.

Try a 60-70 percent setting and see what it looks like, check to see if the size is okay in the File Properties. If it is pixilated or is too large, compress your original QT video exported from Final Cut once again, this time using a different quality setting.

Save your file in the Finished Stories folder if you’re a 4804 student, or keep going to publish the file on the web if you’re in 4802.

You’re almost done!

Posting video online

Save your exported video in the Classes/4802/Yourlastname, First Name/Webpages folder.

Open your page in Dreamweaver. Manage Sites. Go to Insert > Media Plugin > choose your mpeg video file.

Change the size of the box to the size a bit bigger than your exported frame size to allow enough space for the playback controls (try 500 x 320), check that you can see the playback controls when you preview the page.

Turn off Autoplay feature.

Save your page.

Publish it online using Put button (upward arrow).

Check your page online. Go to web.missouri.edu/~yourpawprint/4802.

Congrats! You’re done!

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