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The Audio Process
More often than not, I'll hear a song and think "that would make a perfect vid for..." The lyrics and/or instrumental feel is something that I feel are presented by characters or could take the characters in a different direction than is shown/aired. Other times I've been inspired by the characters of a particular show and then go out and find a song that blends well with a tone I want to set for the vid. Having recently finished a new fanvid, I'll take you through the process I used. The vid in question is Prospero's Speech, which focuses on the characters of President Laura Roslin and Admiral William Adama of Battlestar Galactica.
- Finding the song: Generally, it's something out of my computer playlists or I have it on CD. Then I hunt down the lyrics (if its not an instrumental piece), either from the CD insert or online. I'll often print out the lyrics (or write them down), then break down the song into time and line breaks. This is somewhat tedious but gives you a good grasp for timing. Open your song up in your media player (Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, iTunes, etc.) and play it. Pausing and starting for the start and end of each line/stanza. Mark down the times for the intro, and the ending as well. See below for example.
You get a good grip of what the musician had in mind, the flow and and feel of the music. The song chosen for this vid is Loreena McKennitt's Prospero's Speech. I prefer using lossless .wav files than .mp3 files because the quality of the soundfile is better, though I have used mp3 files many times.
In writing down the start and stop times, I find it also helps when I go to cut and clip the video files because I have then a rough idea in looking for length of clip I will need. Once in the editing process, you can trim the audio and video further as needed, but more on that later as we go along.
- Inserting the Audio Clip: Bring up your video editor. In this case, as I mentioned in Part I, I'll be using Sony Vegas Video. To insert the file, you can either click on 'File', then go down to 'Import' and then select media. Or in the bottom window of SVV, there's some icons above a browser window. The second one over shows a file folder with a music note and horizontal video reel (which will also prompt you to import files). Bring up the file you want. In this case, I bring up the .wav file of "Prospero's Speech" from my music folder.
Once it is imported into the program, I drag and drop the file up to the start of the audio/music section of the timeline. The storyboard & timeline is where you can make edits later on.
The BIGGEST thing you need to remember is to SAVE, SAVE, SAVE. You do not want to have to rebuild from scratch because something happened along the way and you lost your project. Not fun. This can be done by clicking on 'File' then 'Save Project As' or 'Ctrl' + S. Then label it however you want, and remember where you`ve saved it. Particularly due to the fact that now you've got this part done, you'll be closing this program for a bit until you've grabbed your video files.
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Titling Your Project
Titling a vid. This is entirely up to the individual. Some like to title at the beginning, others at the end, or a combination therein. There are several ways you can do this. If you want to lay it over clips, you may want to wait for this step later in the process. I'll make reference back to this section afterwards for further reference.
An example of credits at the beginning can be found with Frostbite. In some of the more recent vids I've done, I've put a title at the beginning and the credits at the end, as I've done with this video. Which is what we're going to do here, though you can play around with it to see what your preferences are. Put in what you'd like to title your vid. For my purposes here, it's 'Prospero's Speech'. Which also happens to be what I name the vid file and is the name of the song . Again naming purposes - make it easy to remember. :)
In Sony Vegas Video (SVV), highlight the text panel of the upper part of the program box. Then go to the toolbar across the top of the box to 'Insert'. Scroll down to Text Media and click. You will get a new window box come up, called Video Event FX. Check that the frame size says 720 x 480 pixels.
In the Edit section, go to the text box and click within the square and click on 'Ctrl' and 'A' buttons to delete the Sample Text that's there. Adjust the font size down to about 36 or so. Then you can type in the title of your project. You can also change the font of the text and the size. Select whatever font you like, but make sure it's readable to the audience. Also you may want to go with a font that matches the tone of the video. For example if it's a more romantic pairing or soft flowing vid, go with a script font, or if it's more fast paced and carefree, select a font that suits the needs of that. You can see what your font will look like in the video window on the right side of the program window. For positioning of the title, whether you want it at the top, bottom, middle, etc., go to the next tab marked 'placement'. By moving your cursor over the text bar, you can adjust where you want the title to go.
In the next tab, 'Properties', you can adjust the text colour and the background colour. For example, if you have a dark clip (or black screen) you'll want to go with a light colour font. Likewise, if you've got a very light clip or white screen at the beginning, you'll want a dark colour font. If you're going to be putting a title or end credits over a clip, then don't adjust the colour background. If you just want a colour background instead of a clip, then you can choose the colour you want.
Once you're done with all the settings, just click on the 'x' at the top of the Video Event FX box and it will automatically drop your text box into the text panel. If you click on the text box, by moving the cursor, you can shorten or lengthen how long the title will play for within the clip/blankspace.
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The Video Collection / Capture Process
Selecting the Source Material: Unless you've got some kind of fabulous memory which allows you to remember which episode has the particular sceene in it that you're looking to obtain, the best thing to do is check out a synopsis for a particular show with a detailed episode guide if available. The Battlestar Wiki - provides an excellent episode guide from which to work. A good number of television shows out there now have detailed episode guides put out either by the show's powers that be, and/or by fans of the show. Usually doing a Google search on the show and episode guide will give you information you need. I have a rough guestimate as to which scenes happen in a particular season but not always down to a particular episode. So this helps. Then you want to narrow down the episode to the particular scene(s) you want to grab. Now, preferably, I want to gather my video source files from commercial DVD files. This is not always possible, particularly if you're looking to grab the files from the current season or that the source material has yet to be released in DVD format. Next best thing is captured digital episodes (whether you do it yourself from TiVO, or Personal Digital Video Recording, or you download it via torrented files, I tend to look for those that are torrented in HDTV format for best quality. If you are grabbing torrented files, they are generally in .avi [Audio Video Interleave] file format. Depending on your editing software some prefer avi and some prefer mpeg (the one I have likes the latter). If the program you use prefers the latter then you need a program like WinAVI to convert the file to mpg format. You need to select the DVD button icon. You select the avi video file you want to convert, then choose the output directory in which you want save the file.
If your files are already in mpg format, you can use TMPEGEnc to cut and clip files. More on that later.
DVD Conversion: For this process I use a program called Corel's (formerly InterVideo) DVD Copy Platinum version 5. First off, select the source dvd drive. then the drive to which you want to save the file.
After which, the third step says Copy As, check off MPEG-2 - PC
To the left of the program box there is a little hammer icon. Click on that and it will bring up the 'Optional Settings'. Here you can choose what temporary path you want to save the file in, and what to label the file. You can also check on the MPEG-2 settingus to make sure they are what your looking for under the profile drop-down box. Then you click on the 'ok' box to go back to the main program box.
The mode should be checked off as 'Customise', as you can click off a particular title to copy rather than the whole film/episode. To know which title you want to grab, open up your computer's DVD player program. Within the toolbar part of the prgram you will see a section that has the title and chapter numbers listed for each section of the dvd. For example, you could want Title: 01; Chapter: 02. In the Battlestar Galactica film, Razor, that would bring you to the chapter: 'Taking Command' (found when you go through scene selection). It's a pretty quick method to find the scenes you want via the scene selection method. Then you go back to DVD Copy program and click off the little plus sign in front of Title 01. Where it gives you the boxes in front of the chapter numbers, click off the chapter you want. In this case, chapter 02. If you want the whole episode, just click on the title and leave the chapters alone as it will capture all of the chapters within that section.
Continue to do this for all the DVD source files you want to grab. Remember to save them all in the same folder what you want to save your project file as (eg ProsperosSpeech_VidPrep) and name it. Easier recall later. This is what takes the longest time initially. Sometimes that in itself might make you want to give up. But keep persevering. In the next section, I will go through the Video Editing Process
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