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I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my editing techniques ( as can be seen in youtube 'quixotemeetspapillon' ) in particular, stuff that has been filmed 'in front of camera' and would appreciate any advice on this.
My method is as follows:
I 'rough cut ' at a convenient point ( where I have scratched my nose, sworn, or freezed etc; ) I then expand the time line to almost max. then click on the speaker icon (to give me the audio visualisation) then single frame operation ( rocking back and forth ) until I find the spot where my mouth closes and eyes are open, and the audio indicator stops, (sometimes this has to be a compromise as the A/V doesn't always match up ) then I cut. if it is an adjoining clip the same technique is used, if I am patching in a piece from further down the line I do the same thing, followed by dragging this clip into the library
then paste it into the timeline at the edit point .
I don't use any transitions or fades: the reason being is; If I am having a Really' bad hair day' and there are lots of 'cuts' the end product can look pretty bad. I use VS11.5+ my camera is a mini DV Canon MV650i.
When 'in front of camera' I look directly into the camera, start the camera count upto 3 then speak and reverse this process when pausing the camera the theory being it should be easier to edit!! So ' Aye, There's the RUB' is it me? or am I expecting to much from VS11.5+?
Any tips etc appreciated.
Yours JIMZJAZZ

Since you're editing DV (avi), the A/V should not be OOS. Are you splitting the audio from the video before making your cuts? If so try doing all your cuts before splitting the audio...

Also with VS11.5+ you do have the ability to use Cue points to mark where you want to make cuts, add titles, music, ect.. This would help in keeping things synced up, especially when you are doing frame-accurate cutting.

Oh and BTW, I don't have clue why the US Govt uses the 08/08/06 or however date format. I don't, and don't like it. Date formatting for me has always been, 08/06/2008....

Do you count to 3 aloud?
If so, don't.
Start by

turning camera on
breath 5 times do your chat
stop talking
breath 5 times
then turn camera off.

Many thanks Ron
DONT YOU EVER SLEEP!
You've got me on OOS? no I don't split the audio, and yes I have used the facility ( as described) It didn't really help to any great extent. My main concern is the fact that in my 'polished version' some of the cuts are quite visible and this annoys me! especially when I think I have done a decent job when editing and I am used to Audio editing using MAGIX cleaning lab where I can hit the spot right on the nose.
Thanks also for the date comment , but I am still no further forward, life can be full of 'trials and tribulations'

I've had a look at 4 of your videos. What I'm about to say is less about VS and editing than camera and speaking techniques. With all due respect, a talking head is boring after a few moments. After 5 minutes, it is painful. IMHO, you must cut in with something else. For example, when you talk about Thiefrow, you could cut in with a shot of it, as your commentary continues. Cut in with a still of the Aldermaston marches and a jar of potted shrimps etc. Just enough to make it interesting, but don't overdo it. Above all, if you watch TV, a camera is rarely on a speaker for more than a few seconds before it cuts to a different camera, either close-up or longer view. If you can't afford a second camera, have someone move it and change the zoom after you break off because of a boo-boo.

And don't hold a microphone where it looks as if you have hold of a part of your body!

The next thing is that it is a dead pan staring contest between you and your audience. Move around a bit and use gestures. The art of speaking includes both face and hand gestures. Look at Obama or Bill Clinton speaking; they are both masters at attention-keeping by the subtle use of them. Blair was also good except he used his smile too much (a little is good). Ehud Olmert and Al Gore have poor gesture usage, including vocal gestures, which are also important. Rhetorical techniques help keep the interest of your audience. For example, the punch line of your potted shrimp anecdote was known ages before it was given. If it had been me, starting where you say you had put the jar in the aircon duct, I would immediately have said, with gestures such as wrinkling nose, "Three weeks later there was an awful smell in the room and I thought, ##### me, I forgot those shrimps. I was hauled over the coals for that..." No one is interested whether you were denounced or not, but voice inflection is just as telling.

Then, and I'm much worse than you are for this sin, there are all the ers and the ums. To avoid this, I script every word and use a monitor immediately under the lens as a teleprompter with the script, written in Word with 36 point characters. I have someone off camera scroll it with a mouse wheel. But don't make it look as if you are reading. Use it more as an aide mémoire, while the content of the script is in your mind. Rehearse it several times to get the right inflections in your voice and, if there is the slightest hesitation or error, do the take again and again until it is perfectly right. I rarely record more than 2-4 sentences at a go, always breaking where I can put in a planned cut.

As for VS editing, you can use transitions and p-in-p much more freely if you have more material than a single talking head and these will appear seamless with distinct cuts. At all costs, avoid cuts with almost no difference between the two scenes, so that it looks like your head has received an invisible punch from Mohammed Ali. If you must do this, put in a fading transition or, sometimes better, a morph.

I don't have any examples on YouTube to show you, as I appeared only briefly on a couple of videos for my company (I detest lenses looking at me). However, I briefly did the commentary for the My Town competition entry at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52skkEz36RU - I ask you to notice how I broke the sequence with the Mukhtar speaking with shots, rather than a boring minute of looking at him. The rest I did as described, written, scripted and recorded in a great rush over a couple of hours. It is far from perfect, hardly even adequate, but -- remembering I'm a worse ummer and erer than you are -- I think it makes my point.

I hope you don't consider this criticism as harsh: I've tried to be as constructive as possible.

skier-hughes wrote:Do you count to 3 aloud?
If so, don't.
Start by

turning camera on
breath 5 times do your chat
stop talking
breath 5 times
then turn camera off.

Thanks Graham
NO! I am not that Bad! ( I hope not anyway? ) so I don't count aloud, But I will try your suggestions

Thanks Devil
I hear what you are saying Re. 'in front of camera technique' and am aware of a lot of the points you made, but in effect I am telling storys and not trying to make a movie, so a lot of your comments are not applicable. My main concern is about my editing techniques, if you can forward any thing on this I would be obliged

jimzjazz wrote:Thanks Devil
I hear what you are saying Re. 'in front of camera technique' and am aware of a lot of the points you made, but in effect I am telling storys and not trying to make a movie, so a lot of your comments are not applicable. My main concern is about my editing techniques, if you can forward any thing on this I would be obliged

I have to agree with Devil. You are videotaping yourself, so you are trying to make a movie.

As far as editing techniques go, no matter how precise the cut, if there is movement, and you cut part of it out, the resulting "jump" will be very noticeable, probably more so than your bad hair.

Devil gave you great advice in regard to using cut-aways. They can be placed at the spots where your edits are very noticeable.

I've not watched one yet, but a good movie tells a story. If all you want is people to see your face, them it may be better off just in audio.

Editing technique is all about Devil's comments, how to make one piece flow into the next.

I'd better watch one

I haven't watch one either, but I know in my case that my face was made for radio, that's why I stick to just audio commentary.

I tried to find something like what I was saying. Expertvillage has a number of how to tell a story clips, about 1 minute each. Nicholas the storyteller epitomises what I said earlier. Look at several of his clips and note his gestures, his face, his fluency, his articulation, his intonation. He is a master, riveting one's attention, but he is also giving you masses of good hints about it. And yes, there is at least one transition in each clip, but I bet you don't even notice it, because it involves a different camera angle. Try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2nGkuo3PcY as a starter.

When you have absorbed that, look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFC-URW6wkU Prof. Sturm is not the world's best speaker (those who profess seldom are!) but he starts an allegorical story as an example in the 4th minute. Look how he does it. OK, this is filmed in a classroom under atrocious conditions, but there is a lot to learn there.

Have you thought about telling a story without words to your camera? This is a challenge. There is a truly outrageous and outstanding example by a presumably deaf mute at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfI5i_i4Dwo

Otherwise, I agree with Black-Lab and Skier-Hughes, do it in audio only. You must use video and editing to help drive your story along. Please excuse my bluntness, but sitting like a stuffed sheep as you drone along does nothing to help what you are trying to say. In fact, IMHO, it is a hindrance. For goodness' sake, be more imaginative, be bold, inflect, use your video to complement your story, not hinder it. Use your camera in bolder ways, use dramatic lighting in keeping with what you are saying. I'll make up a partial micro-scenario for you:
Imagine you are telling a story which slowly leads up to a dramatic ending as you wake up from a nightmare. You start as you would do normally, then, as you build up to the climax, you make your lighting slowly and imperceptibly more dramatic, say, to just one spotlight relieved by flickering firelight and by lowering the pitch of your voice (can be done electronically in Audacity). At the crucial moment, shout, "Then I woke up", accompanied by the clash of a cymbal, lighting back to normal Then fade out rapidly. To do this well, you will need to use VS quite a bit but I bet it will keep your viewers on the edge of their seats with an adrenaline rush. This could be done in about 90 seconds of video, 2 minutes at the outside.

You are not a youngster, from appearances. Perhaps you remember the lugubrious Valentine Dyall on steam radio, "This is your storyteller, the man in black!" in Appointment with Fear. Cast your mind back and remember how he told his stories. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any recordings of his stories, that I know of.

I watched "what did you do in the war Daddy?" and see the problem you have with your cuts.

There is nothing at all you can do in editing straight cuts to make this better, as you'll never be in exactly the same position. It may look slightly better if you use a shortish crossfade, as often used in tv.

I'd still go for some other shots though, a bit of machine gun fire in the background, pictures of the areoplanes you speak about etc, all would have added to the story telling. Someone like me, in there forties, not even early now, doesn't know what all those planes looks like, so what would talking about them mean to an eighteen year old?

Thanks Guys
I was hoping that I would get some tips on 'editing' but it seems that in the main you are more interested in my filming techniques which were only included to hilite some of my poor editing techniques and seems to have ended up as a critique in respect of my filming.
When I said I was not making a movie, I meant not 'BEN HUR' but more 'Jackanory' (for non-UK members, this was a very popular children's story-telling programme) VLOGS are entirely different kettle of fish from the film making process, where all of your suggestions can be included. They are my reminisces hopefully to be enjoyed by 'all ages' and if he youngsters dont know what a Sunderland flying boat is, they can soon find out on the Internet mind you a lot of these whizz-kids could probably tell us where it was made, and the pilot's name was 'Bunny' Bosanquet'!!
VO's are easy, and can be scripted but it is entirely different when you are standing in front of a camera and having to ad-lib for ten mins. as some of you seem to have found out (no hiding behind 'idiot boards for me. more WYSIWYG and 'warts and all'
So perhaps it is time to remember that when you are up to your neck in crocodiles that the object of the exercise was to drain the swamp IE hopefully giving me the benefit of your editing experience with tips on video editing etc.
LOL
JIMZJAZZ

jimzjazz wrote:Thanks Guys
I was hoping that I would get some tips on 'editing' but it seems that in the main you are more interested in my filming techniques which were only included to hilite some of my poor editing techniques and seems to have ended up as a critique in respect of my filming.....

Editing begins before you even pick up the camcorder.
It is termed planning - you have to plan in advance what it is you hope to achieve. You need to create a story board. You then pick up the camcorder and any other equipment required and start filming.

Later when you transfer all this material to the computer you have to check that what you have is what you wanted. You might have to "get the scissors out" and cut stuff away. It is possible that things were filmed in a certain sequence but the "story" needs to be re-arranged to make more sense and so you might grab bits from the middle and move them to the beginning or the end.

You might also want to add things to the movie to draw attention to important things. This could be by zooming in on something, adding text, even something as raw and obvious as a large arrow pointing at it.

Whilst we can tell you how to cut something out, or how to superimpose text onto a video, or use a picture in picture effect or split screen(s) - you must remember that no two movies will be the same and each individual movie will have its own editing decisions and requirements.

What is more important is what my colleagues above have mentioned - filming technique. Get that right and the editing stage becomes easy.
Get the raw material wrong and you end up trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

For further advice please view:
How should I go about doing 6 tapes of editing?

Jim,

I think that it may not be obvious to you, there were some very helpful tips for your editing.

1. Straight cuts, when you are the "actor" and cameraman, without the cuts being noticeable is nearly impossible. You could spend days on trying to get the precise point so that the cut can not be seen. But as Skier-Hughes stated, you're not going to be able to be in the exact position for the next cut, if you have to get up from your chair to stop and restart the camera. About the only viable option would be using a remote control for your camera.

Now the video editing tip is to have a cameraman, or a second camera. That way the cuts are better disguised. Also try using a cross-fade transition to mask those cuts.

2. The other "tips" such as those that would also lend themselves to enhancing your story, such as the introduction of images or even video clips, can also help with hiding the points where you have to cut.

Devil was correct when he spoke of Clinton and Obama being very good speakers. Even though you may not like what they are saying, they know how to keep you listening. Bush on the other hand, has got to be the worst public speaker, he comes off like a complete idiot. There's late night talk shows that really like making fun of his attempts at speeches.

I think that since you are putting so much time and effort into this, you would want it to be something that when someone starts viewing one of those clips, they will not want to press the stop button. A good author writes books so that when the reader reaches the bottom of a page, he will not want to put the book down. You know it's 9pm when you start reading, and at midnight you want to go to sleep, but you just keep saying "Just one more page"... Before you know it, you've finished the book. That's what the author wanted, for you to read the whole book...

So I guess, that if you choose to dismiss the excellent tips provided, then you really don't want anyone to view an entire clip, let alone another clip...

Editing video is more than just making a cut here or there. It's the editor's job to ensure the bad is cut out, and to add things such as effects, and filters to enhance the video...