Video.doc
JMA501
rev 04/09/2014
Objectives/New Terms:
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Nonlinear Editing (NLE)
What is NTSC
What is Persistence of vision
State Frame Rates for video and film
Compare interlaced and progressive displays
What is the impact of improper White Balancing
What are the two aspect ratios most often used for
video?
 What is the SMPTE time code?
 What do pan and dolly mean?
 Premiere Fundamentals
Shooting Guidelines
 Rule of thirds
 Headroom
o Leave some space above the subject’s head.
 Have subject looking into the frame
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 If there is motion, usually make it go left to right
 Fill the frame…zoom in on your subject
 Use a tripod…steadies camera
White Balance before you shoot.
 When you look at a white object, say the page of a
book or a sheet of white paper, it appears white to you
regardless of the light source. When lit by an ordinary
household bulb, or a florescent light, or outside in
daylight it still looks white to your eye.
 But to the camera’s eye, each of these light sources is
different and each produces a tint of color on the white
object. And unless the camera makes some sort of
adjustment for this variation in light color, a white
object will not appear white in your photos.
 We measure light in degrees Kelvin
Some color values: warm to cool
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Candle:
100 Watt Bulb:
Halogen:
Twilight:
High Noon Sun:
Sunlight:
Overcast Sky:
Clear Blue Sky:
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1900K
2850K
3200K
4000K
5400K-5600K
4800K-5800K
5400K-6200K
6200K-7800K
 So: Tell the camera what is white in the scene
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 If you tell camera what white looks like indoors, then
you go outside and don’t white balance, everything is
blue
 Be sure you white balance…best way: (Assumes you
are using a “real” video camera, not your mobile
device)
o Turn camera off,
o Hold pure white card/paper in front of the lens,
o Turn camera on., or zoom in at something white
Most cameras provide the feature to manually set the white
balance, or may have presets like flash, outdoors, cloudy
etc. Your mobile phones usually have white balance
features: Most of you leave white balance alone,
Auto white balance determines an average color
temperature for the entire scene, and then uses this as the
white balance.
Time Code (SMPTE)
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
Used to specify a specific point in the video.
Format: HH:MM:SS:FF
Interpret as Hour, Minute, Second, Frame
Example: 01:10:10:24
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So, the above means: One hour, 10 minutes, 10 seconds,
24th frame
Also 01;10;10;24, (use of semi colons) This format is used
by Premiere Pro (the video app from Adobe), and in fact, is
preferred, but both : and ; work.
Pan, Dolly and Zoom
 Pan…move camera horizontally or vertically...use a
tripod! Do it slowly
 Dolly…to move in physically (dolly in) or to move
away (dolly out)
 Zoom… Change focal length to make it appear
subject closer or farther away
US Video Standards
 First standards Established by the NTSC (National
Television Standards Committee…,there are other
standards (for digital TV, for example, but for this class:
NTSC)
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Frames, Frame Rates, Frame Sizes
 Conceptually, motion is captured and displayed as a
sequence of pictures at a constant frequency, 24 or 30
frames per second.
 Each “picture” is called a frame.
 How fast the pictures/frames are captured or played
back is called the frame rate, which is measured in
frames per second (fps).
 We see a frame of video, then another frame etc.
o Like old flip books you might have created!
o Our eyes are fooled …(called persistence of
vision)
…The ability of the eye to retain the impression of an
image for a short time after the image has disappeared
 As long as the frame rate is 24-30 times per second,
we don’t see any flickering...called Critical Flicker
Frequency
Frame Rates
 Movies use 24 frames/second (fps)
 Video (including Blu-Ray) shows 30 fps
 To make it work, some frames (6) are duplicated in
each second to get to the 30 value.
 We perceive it as motion due to the persistence of
vision
Frame Sizes
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TV Frame size
Standard Definition
HD
Full HD
Ultra HD …aka 4K
Pixels/Line
720
1920
1920
4096
Lines (rows)
480 (We’ll use)
720
1080
2304
Ultra HD just beginning. Expensive TVs
How are frames created: Scanning Methods
Interlaced versus progressive Scanning
Interlaced Scanning…
 With Standard Definition TV (SDTV) and some
HDTVs, the image is created by an electronic gun that
“paints” every other line one line at a time, starting
with even lines (aka the lower field…2,4,6,…480),
 “Gun” shoots electrons top to bottom…
 gun shut off and goes back to the top
 Paints’ the odd lines.
This is called interlaced scanning (HD 1080i, SDTV,…)
 Results in two fields…odd/even aka upper/lower per
frame
Watch for 1080i TV s, and also 720i..Genrally don’t
buy…cheaper but quality suffers.
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Progressive Scanning…Best we can do
 Entire frame done at once, not odd then even
lines…all lines are “painted” one after another.
Used with DVDs, HDTV
File Formats: When video has been captured to a
computer
 AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) most common. It is a
“wrapper”, you can put anything inside it.
 FLV Flash Video---used on Web…not on IPad ,
IPhone, (most) Androids
 MOV – Apple QuickTime format
 MP4 - a file format that can store anything… Can be
streamed, can be played in almost every browser. It’s
becoming the standard format for Web video
 MPEG-2 -(Moving Pictures Experts Group)
Supports DVD format, and HDTV. If your video is to
be used to create a DVD, choose MPEG-2 as the format.
Note: mp3 is audio spec for mpeg-2
We will have to change video formats from AVI to
MPEG-2...final format for DVDs…called transcoding
(switch from one video format to another)
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Let’s see how some of these terms can be applied
Getting Started
 Create folder:
o InClass>Premiere>Project1
We will store our movie assets (music, still images,…)
inside the Project1 folder
Premiere
Premiere is a Non-Linear Editing (NLE) program video
editing application
 Can go directly to a particular (remember SMTPE)
spot…don’t need to linearly navigate (using VCR-like
controls) to the spot
 The videos we make are built around a
timeline…show this asset ( a picture, a video clip,…)
for x seconds, then this asset for y seconds, etc., then
add music to play for z seconds, and play this song
while this picture displays, etc.
Download some assets
 Right-click the Video Assets link (project1.zip) on our
Web site, and save, then unzip, the file into your
InClass>Premiere>Project1 folder. It contains: two
music clips, several cat jpg pictures (what else!) , and
a short avi file shot with my old video tape camera.
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Premiere Basics
 Start Premiere Pro
 Choose New Project
A New Project window opens
 For Location, browse to your
InClass>Premiere>Project1 folder
 Enter a project Name: CatsMovie
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 Click OK
 Another window opens… a collection of presets, or
templates; the default one is highlighted
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Why 29.97 and not 30? Has to do with first adapting black
and white video for color when it first came out, and we’ve
been stuck with it ever since.
 We will use DV-NTSC>Standard 48KHz (see above)
Note: DV is a codec: Compressor/Decompressor,
 Sequence Name: Default is OK It’s the name of our
timeline
More Notes:
 NTSC…defaults to Standard Definition
 Audio: 48,000 samples/second ; CD quality
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 Frame Rate: 30 fps (29.97)
 Frame Size: 720 x 480
Note: Firewire – a connection cable for some older
camcorders
 Click OK
Today, we mainly save video to SD cards (Secure
Data)…of course we then need a SD card reader…
 Choose Editing CS5.5 workspace: I’m more
comfortable with it, and my notes assume CS 5.5,
layout
Will see the default workspace: Looks intimidating, three
main windows aka. monitors: Project, Source and
Program , plus a small toolbox
The Project Window
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Where you store all your imported assets; do so now
 File>Import> pic1.avi ( small 6-second avi movie clip
of one of my cats)
 Import the remaining assets...not the files/folders
Premiere created)
 You will see this in your project panel:, if you choose
icon view
And
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 Click List view to show asset names, not icons
The Info tab
 Click the pic1.avi movie clip in the Project Window
 Click Info tab:
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 Notice the frame size: 720 x 480
 Frame rate essentially 24 fps (source was a tape-based
camera, that defaulted to 24 fps)
 Captured sound was 32 kHz… DV NTSC wants 48,000
Exploring the Timeline
 Drag the pic1.avi video clip to the timeline, on the
Video 1 track
 Choose + and – (actually “=” and “-“ ) to zoom in or
out
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There was also an audio track (See Audio 1 above) on the
tape, but it was actually silent…I didn’t capture the sound,
but space was allocated for it on the tape
Note: The yellow line is audio volume…click here to
show/hide the waveform)
In our case:
Still Images Problem
What is the frame size we are using?
Here is info on Coco bed…
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What is the size of the picture?
Again: what is the frame size ?
Will become a problem…The complete picture won’t fit in
frame
 Drag the picture to the timeline after the pic1 video.
 What was the duration of the picture? We’ll modify
that later
 Next, add Rocco Tree Calendar
 Drag Cat Scratch Fever (an mp3 file)
to the beginning of audio 2 track…
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 The audio from the pic1.avi movie clip hogs the Audio
1 track, even though it’s silent
 Also, notice how long the song plays
Let’s fix those problems:
GOALS:
(1) Delete the silent part of the video clip
(2) trim the end portion of the audio clip using the razor
blade and Selection tools,
(3) Resize the jpg pictures
 Use the white arrow to select the pic1.avi audio 1
clip…notice it also selects the video:
Need to unlink the audio from the video:
 Clip>Unlink
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 Now, select and then delete the pic1.avi audio track
Leaves empty area; Move Cat Scratch fever song to fill the
gap
Trimming on timeline
Now, to trim the Cat Scratch track (delete excess music),
find the Razor Tool:
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 Position the razor blade tool where you want the
music to end (say 24 second mark(00:00:24:00) and
click
Your music is now in two pieces
o Select the right portion using selection tool
o Delete the selection
The Volume Indicator:
 If you don’t see the yellow line, click the CollapseExpand Track dropdown:
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 Select the yellow line and decrease the level “a bit” by
dragging the yellow line down
Playing the current video
 To play: Space bar or Enter key, or press Play in
Program window
 Plays in Program window
o Space Bar again to stop
 Also, can use the gold play head above the timeline
 Audio (music) plays after movie clip and the still
picture end
 Later will see how to fade
A Bit more about the interface
Note the two main windows…
 Left one for editing video and audio clips (
aka.Source window)
 Right one shows playback movie (aka.Program
window)
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Safe Areas
 Move the playhead so it’s over one of the cat images,
select the clip by clicking it
 Right-click the Program window, choose SafeMargins
 The safe outer rectangle area (inside the outer
rectangle) is where the significant action takes place.
This is what will show when we create the actual
movie
 The safe title area (inside rectangle) is where you
should place text titles
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Finally, the jpeg images you added to the timeline are a lot
bigger than 720 x 480
 Select coco clip
Can see the actual size if you click it in Project window
and click Info tab (1280 x 1002 pixels)
 Resize by selecting the clip on the timeline, right
clicking, and choosing Scale to Frame Size
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Result:
 File>Save as> Cats Movie2.prproj
 Close and Exit
END
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