The Project file contains a list of the effects you want to apply and references to the movies your applying them to. Project files are incredibly tiny.
1) Launch (double click on) MyVideoEditor
2) Select New Project from the File Menu and the Edit Video Project window will appear.
3) Add some movies to the Project Window. You can either add individual movies using the Add button in the Project Window or from the Desktop, select (hilight) the movie or movies you want to add and then drag&drop them on MyVideoEditor. The movies you add in show up in the Movie list and the first and last frames of each movie is displayed in the Project Window.
4) Once the movies are in the Project, you can use the Up and Down buttons to manipulate the order in which the movies will be sequenced. The Delete button will Delete the selected movie. The Info button displays some general information on the selected movie clip. The Break buttons allows you to break movies into two parts - so you can apply effects between them or delete the parts you don't want.
5) Click on the Save button to save your Movie Project.
Apply Effects and Titles to the Movies in a Project
You can apply simple fade (in, out or cross fade) effects and titling to the start - end of each movie clip. If you have QuickTime 3 installed, you can also apply QuickTime 3 effects between two movie clips. The effects can be applied to the video, audio or both by checking the Video or Audio checkboxes. Titling can be displayed, faded in, faded out or faded in-held-faded out independent of the fade in - fade state of the video and audio.
To Apply a 1 second Fade In to the Video at the Start of a Movie clip.
1) Click on a movie clip in the list. This will be the movie you applying the effect to.
2) Click on the Popup menu to the right of the Start Effect and select Fade In.
3) Click on the Duration pop up menu to the Right of Fade in and select the duration you want it to be (1.0 seconds).
4) Check mark the Video and uncheck the Audio checkboxes.
To Apply a 0.5 second Fade Out to the Audio at the end of a Movie clip.
1) Click on a movie clip in the list. This will be the movie you applying the effect to.
2) Click on the Popup menu to the right of the End Effect and select Fade Out.
3) Click on the Duration pop up menu to the Right of Fade in and select the duration you want it to be (0.5 seconds).
4) Uncheck Video and Check mark the Audio checkboxes.
To Apply a 1.25 second Cross Fade between two movie clips
1) Click on a movie clip in the list. Since we are fading across two movie clips, MVE will only allow cross fading if there is another movie clip in the list after the the one you select.
2) Click on the Popup menu to the right of the End Effect and select Cross Fade.
3) Click on the Duration pop up menu to the Right of Cross Fade and select the duration you want it to be (1.25 seconds).
4) The Video, Audio and Title Check boxes will now be disabled, as MVE applies cross fades to both the video and audio and does not allow titling for cross fades.
To Apply a 2.0 Second Title "My First Movie" that Fades Out to the start of a movie.
1) Click on a movie clip in the list.
2) Click on the Popup menu to the right of the Start Effect and select None.
3) Click on the Duration pop up menu to the Right of Cross Fade and select the duration you want it to be (2.0 seconds).
4) Click on the Set… button to the right of the Title checkbox.
5) When the Titling dialog appears, type "My First Movie" into the edit field to the right of the "Text:" item. Use the Font, Size, Style pop up menus to define the way the text is displayed. Click on the Font and Shadow Clr: Swatches to select colors for the text and enter values (-8 to 0 to +8) to have the text displayed with shadow offsets. To move the "My First Movie" text around, put the Arrow cursor over the gray box around the text and click drag it around. (Note - Under the Edit Menu is an item called Title Prefs…, which allows you to set up a default Title for all new projects, so you do not have to continually re-define the title settings).
6) Once your happy with the appearance of the text, click on the Pop up menu to the right of Titling Effects and select "Fade Out". Now click Okay.
7) The Title item in the Project window will now be checkmarked and your movie will be titled.
To Split a single movie into 2 parts - Use this to cut parts of a movie off or apply effects within a single movie clip
1) Click on a movie clip in the list.
2) Click on the Break button.
3) The Film Strip editor window will appear (tilted the same as the movie clip you've selected).
4) Use the Right Left facing Arrow buttons to scroll the individual frames of the movie to the location you want to break the movie at.
5) Place the Arrow cursor over the Frame you want to insert the break point at and click the mouse. A Vertical line will appear indicating where the break will be made.
6) Click on the Insert Break button to break it here and click the Okay button to accept it.
7) The single movie will be Broken and the two halves of the movie will show up in the Movie List (they will have the same name - but different durations and starting - ending points).
8) Now apply effects between the two clips or use the Delete button to remove one of them.
To Apply a 1.0 second QuickTime 3.0 effect between two movie clips (You must have QuickTime 3 installed to do this)
1) Click on a movie clip in the list. Since we are applying a QT 3 effect across two movie clips, MVE will only allow it if there is another movie clip in the list after the the one you select.
2) Click on the Popup menu to the right of the End Effect and select "QT 3 - 'none'".
3) The QuickTime 3 effect window will appear that allows you to select the QuickTime effect (and it's settings) to apply. Click Okay once you've picked one.
4) Click on the Duration pop up menu to the Right of Cross Fade and select the duration you want it to be (1.0 seconds).
5) The Video, Audio and Title Check boxes will now be disabled, as MVE applies the Quicktime 3 effect to both the video and audio and does not allow titling for cross fades.
Seeing the Fruits of your Labor - Making a Preview movie from a Project
First you need to decide what to compression method and options to use for converting your movie. Were going to create a 15 fps (Frames Per Second) Video compressed movie for a preview. You can choose other options if you wish to experiment or have some idea as to what you want for a final product.
For purposes of Brevity the text "Options -> Compressor -> Video" means select the Options menu, slide down to the Compressor item and select Video in the Compressor sub menu.
1) Options -> Compressor -> Video
2) Options -> Quality -> High
3) Options -> Frame Rate -> 15
4) Options -> Key Frame Rate -> 15
5) Options -> Movie Size -> Actual
Now Select the Options menu, Slide down to Settings and then select Save Settings. The Save Settings item allows you to save you Quicktime Compression settings (ALL of Them) in your Preferences file and later apply them by name when you need to use it again.
Now that we have defined some default compression options, it's time to compress the Project into a movie.
1) If you have the Edit Video Project window up, click on the Save and then Close button because MVE will not compress a Project that is open.
2) From the File Menu, select Compress and then select the "Proj Preview Movie…" item. Now select the Project file to compress in the Open File Dialog and click Open.
3) The Sound settings dialog will then appear and check the No Conversion of Sound Tracks" item and click Okay. You can use this dialog to choose different sound compression options for your movie (NOTE Under the Edit menu is the Sound Prefs… item that allows you to define these settings one time and then automatically re-use them each time you compress a movie or a project).
4) Now the Save As dialog will appear, so select where on your hard drive you want the movie saved and enter the name you want the movie to have. Then click the Save button.
5) MVE will process the project, displaying the effects applied in the Compress… window as it compresses them. If you click the mouse inside the Compress… window, the display of the effect in the window will stop and the words "No updates" will appear. Clicking the mouse again will start updates again. For compressing lengthy movies, stopping the effect display will save a bit of time.
6) Double click on the Preview movie, MyVidCap will launch and open the movie for you. Now play it.
Proj Preview Movie VS Proj Final Movie - What's the Difference?
You may have noticed there were two items in the Compress sub menu that mention Proj(ect). There are two types of compression available for Projects, Preview and Final movies.
A Preview movie uses a nice feature of Quicktime that saves both processing time and disk space, the ability to add movies to other movies without physically adding information, which is know as adding by reference. MVE compresses only the portions of video and audio of the movies you've applied effects to, then puts them physically in the Preview movie and lastly adds in the other unprocessed portions of movies as external movie references. A Preview movie is a quicker way too see the effects you've added in context with the rest of the movie clips, so you can check for errors or other things you may want to change or apply.
The downside to a preview movie is:
1) If you delete a one of the external reference movies in a preview movie, the movie may no longer be playable. This can be eliminated by Flattening the movie (File Menu -> Exports -> Flatten Movie) to make the preview into a self contained movie with no references, but that mitigates the key feature of a reference movie in reducing redundant information on your hard drive.
2) You do not have any control of what the reference movie were created at, such as frame rate, video compressor, audio rates or compression etc, which may make them play very poorly from slower media like CDRoms or Zip drives.
3) You can not apply Cropping to a Preview movie and Filtering and other options only apply to the Effects you did, not the reference movies.
4) Playback of Preview movies is usually not as good (ie you may get jerks and pauses at clip edges or audio drops out) as a self contained movie.
A Final movie takes considerably longer to generate, as it processes ALL the movies (frame by frame) in the project, not just the effects part. The major benefit is you control every aspect of the display, compression, frame rate, cropping, dimensions, audio etc. of the movies, which is very important if your going to put them on CD for distribution and the Final movie is self contained with no references to external movies.
What Compressor should I choose?
Your choice of compression codec depends on what your doing with the movie, such as putting it on a CD for people to use, archiving it to a CD/TapeDrive/Removeable drive for later reference, putting it on a web site for others to download/view, playing it from your hard drive or even recording it back to VCR tape after you've edited it.
Basically this will break down into two competing factors, movie image (± sound) quality VERSUS Movie data rate (how much data per second has to be transferred from the hardrive/cd/inet to insure the movie plays well). Compatibility (QuickTime movies versus Windoze AVI) may also be a factor, but with QuickTime 3 soon to be a cross platform standard it's pretty much a none issue.
1) Really Small Movies for playback on the internet in realtime. Sorenson Video (QuickTime 3 only) or Cinepak at low to medium quality, small movie dimensions (usually 160x120 size), low (1-5 for 33.6 modems) frame rates. Sorenson Video is ideal for realtime internet transmission.
2) Good quality small movies for CD (2 to 24x) playback , for saving space on hard drives/removeables or transferring to friends via the internet (by e-mail, FTP or HTTP transfers - not realtime playback). Sorenson Video (QuickTime 3 only), Cinepak (with a 30 to 60 key frame rate) and possibly Video codec at medium or higher quality, movie dimensions up to 320x240 size, frame rates from 12 to 30 fps and Rate Constrainting (200 - 250 k for 2x CD's) . Use MACE 3 to 1 or IMA 4 to 1 compressed audio.
3) Very Good quality movies for CD (8 to 24x) playback or for hard drives/removeables. Cinepak (with a 15 to 30 key frame rate) or Video codec at high or maximum quality, movie dimensions up to 320x240 size, and frame rates from 12 to 30 fps. Use IMA 4 to 1 compressed audio.
4) Archiving movies for further editing. MJPEG (A or B) at high quality, Component Video (YUV) or None codecs. MJPEG at high quality will reduce the movie size by about 5 to 1 with very little (if any) image degradation. Check mark the "Natural Frame Rate" item to prevent MVE from changing the frame rate to a fixed rate (unless that's what you want).
5) Playing back a movie and recording it to a VCR. MJPEG (A or B) at high quality, Component Video (YUV) or None codecs and a AV Video card that can scale the video and accelerate it's playback. Frame rate and the ability of your hard drive to read in the movie data will be the deciding factor in how well it plays.
Additionally, ASTARTE's M. Pack MPEG compression software is also an excelent product for creating types 2, 3 or 5 movies if you have a PowerMac. For type 5 (playback for recording to a vcr) movies, you'll need a graphics card that can also do MPEG Quicktime scaling / acceleration and can then play a smaller (320x240) sized movie at double or higher size and then record them out.
