AV EDITING TIPS (updated)
This article is based around my experiences using Adobe Premiere on my own PCs (more of which below). It includes rendering tips for slower PCs and a few filming tips at the end. Many of these tips will almost certainly work for other AV editing packages.
Please Note: If you don't find the wait for the progress bar's optimistic rendering time overly irritating don't bother trying these tips as they can be quite time consuming too.
These are general tips and their effectiveness will vary according to your own hardware such as video editing cards (if installed), multiple processors etc. There's also the chance that I'm completely deluded - feel free to point this out in detail. Please feel free to add more tips to this column if you come across any.
Most of these worked for my own particular set-up a few years ago which used an unbelievably slow (for that time) Pentium 133 CPU running, in no particular order of favour, Windows 3.1, 98 and NT4 � 95 was always trouble*. In its favour (and the only reason I'm still sane) it did have beautiful, broadcast quality, state of the art for 1995 input/output and rotoscoping cards which did almost all the processing. DPS Perception 3500 to be exact - as used by Aardman etc. at the time. None of which solved the audio work however.
SUBSTANCE
Think about what you want from the start, if you can. For example, I rarely use effects more complicated than cross dissolves or fades to and from black or white - I'm partially from a film cutting background where every effect costs more cash and complex things are prohibitively pricey. I do make plenty of cuts though - which may be down to over use of a clockwork Bolex which ran for about 20 seconds maximum if shooting live action.
BLACK
So for a solid black piece of video footage - if I haven't created one earlier for a previous project that I can reuse:
- Create a black tif image of 720x576 pixels in Photoshop (assuming the rest of your project is not correct anamorphic wide-screen).
- Open Premiere and set stills import to 1 frame (not the default 150).
- Import the black frame then add to the project.
- Immediately create an avi file from this frame.
- Import the 1 frame avi file then set its speed to 1% and change its duration to around 4 seconds (if your particular version of Premiere doesn't do this automatically).
- Use this black avi file for all black sections needed - adjusting the duration if required. No separate render processing (for black sections) is then required throughout the final rendering of your whole film.
TITLES
I create titles in the same way using Photoshop first then repeat the above type of process which saves your processor creating loads of extra new frames for your final output.
S&M - AUDIO
Think about the audio you've used in your film. If it's all been collected using a mono microphone there's little point outputting your final movie in anything other than 16bit mono - assuming that's what you started with - unless you've been going mad with your audio mixing and panning. (Although, I believe Pinnacle Studio Pro 9 allows for full surround sound fiddling - so it might be fun). Also unless your main audience is going to watching with a really decent audio system mono will be fine. Half the audio information to be processed - bound to be a saving in both time and final file size.
OUTPUTTING
Depending on your hardware set-up there may be a time advantage in outputting your final movie without audio first, then outputting without picture. Convert the picture-free avi to a wav file then combine this with the mute picture track in Premiere then output both as a combined avi. Assuming your picture avi and audio avi are the same length the there should be no sync problems. You may prefer to use this method where lip-sync isn't critical though e.g. if your film is landscapes or objects accompanied by music and effects only.
RECUTTING
So you've edited your film, think you're happy with it and finally export to an avi file with all your titles and effects in place as well as the correct audio and size and waited the couple of hours for it to output. You eventually find it still needs a little tweaking in places. In a situation like this you can easily go back to your last saved project and perform the tweaking etc. but you'll probably find all your effects and titles will need re-rendered again for output. You'll may save yourself a little time by importing the avi file you've just made and performing a few simple tweaks on this - chopping a few seconds here and there or substituting the odd scene. Most of your effects will probably remain untouched. I normally import this avi into another video track e.g. track two and use the original project timeline as a guide to which files are placed where within the new avi to be edited.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Even though you're happy with your final output film you'll still need to ensure it will work on other systems. There's a good chance that the Mac or Windows PC you're editing on will have, over the years, gathered together a fair number of more obscure video codecs as well as video players. There's a big chance your intended audience will not have. The only way to really check apart from reading all the specifications for older versions of Quick Time and Windows Media Player is to try your film on as many machines, both Windows and Mac, as possible having made sure your movie has been encoded with a fairly normal codec in the first place.
SAVE
As with any complex editing job - films, audio, dtp, etc. - I save the files I'm working on regularly. AV editing is rather processor and RAM hungry - crashes both to the desktop and further may not be an infrequent occurrence. Setting up regular auto-saves is OK but not as good as physically Command+S or Control+S-ing the thing. I also regularly save the file with sequential names in case the file I'm working on becomes corrupted for some reason or another.
Thanks to Kye for the next tip: If Premiere (and many other kinds of Adobe software) keeps crashing whilst doing one particular task such as outputting a particular type of file then you can sometimes sort this out by deleting the errant program's preferences.
DECISIONS
I know it's a bit belt and braces but as well as saving the Premiere project file (*.ppj) I also tend to save an EDL (edit decision list) at the end of the day especially if I've been working from more than one camera tape - I've even been known to print this out to ease re-digitizing at a different location but this is probably a bit over the top. The EDL is also handy for recreating the whole edit at a later date using different editing software. Then you've got to think to yourself, "How reliable is my hard-drive�".
MORE ON AUDIO
I also save audio in separate ways once I'm happy with the look of the final film (and think about this as I edit). Try to keep music and effects (M&E) audio track(s) separate from speech track(s). You may, at some distant point in time, decide to make an alternative language version of the film or want to use different music with the film. If you only have a combined output track you'll find yourself a little stuck.
AV IN/OUT
USB2 v Firewire for footage capture and output to camera: I'd go for Firewire every time (even if I had a newer version of Premiere which coped with such things as USB). They both operate at nominally the same speed - unless you are lucky enough to have a camera and PC compatible with Firewire 800 - but USB speed is dependant on other processes being undertaken by your PC and is therefore normally that bit slower and, I think, less reliable.
SKINNY TAPE
Just a thought but miniDV tapes are very thin and travel at high speed - spinning them backwards and forwards over the play heads many times to find in and out points may not be a stunningly good idea. It may be wiser, if you have the hard disk space, to take in a little more then trim a little more on your PC.
SHOOTING
A word to directors/camera-people/sound-recordists - please, please, please remember to get plenty of cut-aways and usable atmos tracks.
Cut-aways - such as close-up shots of people's hands, people listening with no moving mouths in the shot, particular points of focus around the room e.g. flip-chart etc. give cover for when you want to include audio but its particular video is unsuitable.
Atmos tracks - the ambient background noise of the location you're filming in during moments of relative silence (no people talking, no cars passing, no mobile phones ringing) is incredibly useful for most audio cutting. You can use atmos to cover gaps where you've had to cut/mute certain words/sounds or blend others together.
I'm sure there's probably much more - watch this space for developments...
DEVELOPMENTS (ALREADY)
I've just spent the last couple of days working on a video for East Lothian Council was particulary happy with the cut etc, etc, etc output what I thought would be a perfect file and realised one of the reversed shots still looked rubbish... If your reversing the playback of a shot i.e. you want it to run backwards it really is worth de-interlacing the fields - a much smoother result will be gained.
*I would have carried on using 3.1 which was fairly stable but I eventually decided to give up my fiendishly expensive Panasonic PD optical disk drive (£40 per disc with very few suppliers) for a £250 external CD burner. I just couldn't find reliable burning software under 3.1. Win 95 was an unstable pile of poo which stayed on the system for under a week. NT4 fared little better and was only used for a particular piece of software (Speed Razor) which output scrolling titles more convincingly than Premiere 4. I still use 98 on this particular system - which is now based around a Pentium III 450 MHz chip.