Day Two

Day Two - Capturing and Finishing Your Movies

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Assignment From Last Day: Borrow your school's video camera and film approximately 5 minutes of footage on some form of tourism for Nova Scotia. Example: You could film nature scenes, downtown Dartmouth or Halifax, etc. Bring your camera and footage on tape to this week's class.

Today we will learn how to use Studio 8 for capturing video and making final movies. Follow the steps below:

1) Capturing - Before you start the Studio 8 application, connect your camera to the firewire cable and turn it on. Firewire is a video connection port that is many times faster than USB or other forms. If your camera is a Sony model the name of the port will be "ILink". Each manufacturer has a different name for the technology. Start the Studio 8 application and switch to the Capture Video tab. If an emulated LCD display shows up on the image of the video camera you have made the correct connections.

Troubleshooting:

- Make sure you camera is one

- Make sure your camera is in VCR or VTC mode (playback mode)

- Check to see that the black firewire cable is in the correct port on the back of the tower

- Shut down and restart both the camera and Studio 8 application.

Using the playback buttons rewind your tape to the beginning of your footage. Make sure the full quality capture button is on. A diskometer pie graph will show you the available space on your hard drive. Press Start Capture. When your 5 minutes of footage is complete click Stop Capture. Notice that Studio 8 recognized each time the pause button was press during filming. It will split each of your scenes in separate clips.

Click to enlarge

2) Editing Your New Footage - Click on the Edit tab and return to your album's clip previews. Using your knowledge from last day, drag your clip in the movie window and begin editing. You have 1/2 an hour to trim five minutes of footage down to exactly 1 minute. Include the following:

a) 1 full screen title

b) 1 title overlay

c) Background music

d) Slow Motion

Examples:

Tourism Nova Scotia (quicktime required)

Created by two Grade 4 Ross Road Student (March 2002)

Tourism Nova Scotia (quicktime required)

Created by the winners of the 2002 HRSB Skills Competition held at Ross Road School

3) Finishing Your Movie - There are four general ways to finish (produce) your movie in Studio 8; a) back to video tape (best quality), b) To DVD (excellent quality but you need a DVD burner), c) AVI quality (excellent quality but very large), and c) as a Web or e-mail ready file (MPEG, Real Player, or Windows Media - poor quality but extremely compressed).

Click to enlarge

Before choosing a finishing option you should consider your audience. Use the chart below as a guide:

Audience (Purpose)	Ideal Format
Transfering to a VCR or displaying on an LCD projector	Choose TAPE and send the film back to your camera. You can also capture your finished product again in the future - this makes the TAPE feature good for saving projects as well.
Saving a full quality project.	Choose the AVI tab for this. Make sure your film is under 750 MB (the size of one CDR). You can save your entire film as a full quality AVI that can later be imported back into Studio 8. This is an ideal option if you plan to load raw footage onto an entire lab of machines. Without capturing you can place the CD in every drive and import the project by clicking on the yellow folder icon of the EDIT tab and browsing for your file. (copy the file from the CD to the hard drive first).
Display in a Web Page	Studio 8 can render your video as a Windows Media File or a Real Player file. By clicking on the STREAM tab you may search for the best quality for you. A Windows Media file will give you the best quality in an average sized window.
E-Mailing	Although videos are generally too large to e-mail you may wish to compress them even further with the MPEG tab. An MPEG will also open in both Windows Media and Quicktime players. The downside is that much quality will be lost.

Assignment For Next Day: To promote multimedia technology skills I have designed and organized a skills competiton for grades 4-9 here at the DTC on March 20th and 21st (Thursday and Friday). To simulate how this day will be organized for the TV/Video Production groups we will do a mini competition. For next week film two to three minutes of footage on a vehicle make of your choice. You will have an hour and a half next day to capture, edit and finish your video. We will then present each one.

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