How to Capture Video for Editing

David Rotan: Hi, I am David Rotan, Video Production Manager with monkeysee.

com and I am showing you how to make the perfect user-generated video, to upload to our site. Not only that, I'm just giving you some great video production tips in general to use for your home videos.

Right now we're going to talk about editing, you don't need a lot to get started, a lot of computers come with basic video editing software already installed when you buy your computer, such as Windows Movie Maker and all Macs usually come with iMovie HD, which is what I'll be showing you today. We'll be editing the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich UGC video that we shot.

To get started, you're going to want to have your video camera, that you shot the project on. This particular camera is a MiniDV format, it takes the small tapes, and almost all cameras are the same when it comes to plugging it into your computer. They usually have a small input in the front or the back of the camera for FireWire, and this one has it here in the front. It's a small 4-pin FireWire, what's called the 4-pin FireWire, and you plug it into the front of the camera and then find the input on your particular computer whatever you're using. Some cameras might use USB.

So you'll just want to familiarize yourself with your particular camera model that you're using and your computer that you're using as well. So now that we have our video camera connected to our computer through our FireWire, and we have the tape in the camera, we make sure that the camera is set to the VTR or VCR mode, you don't want it set to Camera, switch it to VTR mode or Playback mode, it might be called. Then through the FireWire, the editing program that you're using, in this case, iMovie HD, should automatically control your camera.

Down here, there is a little switch on this particular editing program, that has a little picture of a camera. I'm going to click that to make sure that it says, Camera Connected, here on the screen. Then I'm going to come down here and use the toolbar, there is a Play button, and when I hit Play, it's going to begin to play the tape.

Now I can use these controls to scroll back through, I went a little too far, I wanted to capture before I start talking. Remember when we were making the video we talked about pre-roll which is having a few seconds before you or your expert on camera actually started talking. Well, here's a great example of that.

We want to give ourselves a little time to cut and edit, so that it doesn't start exactly on the sentence, we're going to do that in our editing program, so that there is not a lot of dead space before the expert starts to talk, but you don't want to do that while capturing, you want to give yourself enough room to give and take. You might want to put in a fade or a dissolve there, so you need a few seconds before he actually starts talking.

So, I'm going to hit the Play button, and I hit the Spacebar, and it's capturing. Now you'll see over here, on the side, it's capturing all the clips that I am putting into the program, Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3, all the way on down. Now when we come to the point where we have it all, and I'm done, I've captured it all, I'm going to hit the Spacebar again, and it stops capturing, okay.

Now, the video is still playing because I haven't done anything down here in the Controlbar, but it has stopped capturing. Now, here we go with another clip. The video is still playing, and I am going to hit the Spacebar, and now I'm talking there, and it's capturing that. Again, we see that happening right there. That's how you capture video into your editing program.

Now again I'm using iMovie, so all programs will be slightly different but that's a general concept, you're hooking up your camera with a FireWire, you're controlling your camera in the VTR Playback mode, through your program, with a Controlbar here, that looks very much like the controls on your camera and you're capturing clips wherever you want to start it and stop it, with in and out points. It's coming into this preview window.

So whatever program you're using, you want to read up on it, go to the Help menu up here at the top, or just read the instructions for the particular program that you're using, but now we'll start talking about making cuts while editing.