It has been in my mind for a long while to learn video editing. The idea came originally after a Sayadaw U Jotika talk which I thought, should be enhanced in some ways, and published. Particularly, I wanted to add subtitles in several languages, and also some slides illustrating what he is talking about – especially where he used Pali words that many people would not catch.
Being a hands-on kind of person, this meant I had to learn video editing. With the software available these days, this is not so hard. You don’t need school – just go to Youtube and find tutorials for anything you want. Phil encouraged me, and gave me a demo of what to expect.
So below is my first attempt at the job! Not the most splendid clip on Youtube, but it served as a story to practise the different effects I want to be able to use. That is, use of still shots, sound filtering, transition effects and layering of video/still streams. Not bad for someone who only started video editing six days ago!
A few lessons learned – video shot on a phone is not good enough. Get a good sound recording. Tape ambient sound and video. Varied source footage. And other things…
The reason for posting up what is essentially, a rookie student’s first ever fettling, is when you have a goal in mind, and a particular little story to tell, it gets you familiar with all aspects of the software, from start to finish. Small steps require little goals.
Subtitling takes an extraordinary amount of time! I’ve done some subtitling before so I was prepared for this – but roughly one minute of subtitles, takes nearly an hour to do. And that is without any fades or other transition effects to smooth out the visuals. In the six minute clip there are 41 text panels, 15 stills, 3 video streams, a separate filtered mono sound track, and nearly 200 transition effects – all in a six minute clip. Mister Spielberg – I’ll never download a pirate movie again now I know how much work goes into it!
Next up to learn the ins and outs of the many Youtube functions that can be added.
Anyway, enjoy the little promo for Bhikkhuni dharma:
Hi – I’ve done a lot of video editing and I can appreciate all your hard work. When you think that video runs at 29 frames per second, you realize how much work you have actually done over 6 minutes.
Nice job and lovely excerpt that you chose.
thanks
thank you for this beautifully clippings, it’s fantastic. I also like how you played around with those captions.
I was planned to be there but unfortunately wasn’t able to. This short intro gave me some idea of what has happened.
thanks again.
thanks for the comments. Something like this is never finished as there is no end of improvements one can keep making. But I learned what I need to, and future videos will be more simple, if much longer.