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VideoWave 5 You can use some very high-end tools like Adobe Premiere to produce amazing results. However, there are alternatives for the average home user that are inexpensive, easy to use, and fast! The number of such video editing products is growing at an incredible rate. For Apple computers, there is a very popular program in this category called iMovie. It works much the same as VideoWave in terms of an easy interface that produces classy, rapid results. For those of us who just want to "slice and dice" video, as well as occasionally do something much fancier, we now have a whole new world open to us and the options are only going to increase. The nice thing is that whether you are producing video on a Mac or a Windows machine, we can now share the files. The following instructions will give you a quick start to using VideoWave. Keep in mind that they have lots of tutorials in their manual and under Help - Topic Search. Goals for Session I: a) Add video clips to the “library.” b) Add a title screen. b) Edit video clips. c) Add clips to the “storyline.” d) Produce a simple video. Start VideoWave 5 1. Go to Start > Programs > MGI VideoWave 5 > MGI VideoWave 5 NOTE: If others were working on VideoWave before you began, the program may look for video clips in the library that are no longer there (because people took the disk or cd with them when they left). A dialog box may pop up several times (once for each missing video clip) asking you to decide what to do about it. Feel free to tell it to remove or leave the clips. They won’t interfere with what you’re doing. Adding Video Clips to the Library 2. Move your mouse arrow to the middle of the large blue rectangle to the left of the screen. This is the video library. 3. RIGHT click (click down on your right mouse button) while over the video library. 4. You’ll see a box pop up that has the option to “Add Files.” Click on “Add Files.” See Figure 1. Figure 1 
5. The Open dialog box pops up when you click on “Add Files.” See Figure 2. Figure 2 
Locating the Video Clips 6. To locate the video clips, you’ll have to click in the white rectangular box next to “Look in.”A drop down menu appears. 7. Move to where you have your video clips located. Locate a video file, click on it, and then click on open. It will return you to the VideoWave main screen and you’ll see your clip added to the video library on the left. 8. VideoWave will put your clip in alphabetical order among the others in the library. The clip you just added will have a bright orange line around the outer edge highlighting it (Figure 3). Figure 3 
Adding a Title In this part, we’re going to find a single still image from our video clip to use as a background for our video title. 9. Using your LEFT mouse button, click, hold, and drag your video clip into the view screen on the right, and then let go of your mouse button. The view screen is where you’ll do all your editing (Figure 4). Figure 4 
10. Click on the “Cutting Room” button which is towards the top of the column immediately to the left of the library (Figure 5). Figure 5 
Cutting Room: To make changes to your video in any way, you need to activate the Cutting Room button so that various commands will be available to you. 11. Move to a different position in the clip to locate a picture that you’ll use for a title screen. To do that, move your mouse arrow over the small, white rectangle above the time slider. Click, hold, and drag the triangle, left or right, until a picture you like is visible in the view screen (Figure 6). Figure 6 
Now look to the lower left of your screen where you’ll see the Extract command (Figure 7). You’re going to extract an image. Click on the word image. When you do that, the Extract Image dialog box pops up (Figure 8). Figure 7 
12. So that your image will be available in your video library, click on “To Clipboard” and then click on Extract. You’ll see your image is now available for you in your video library. (You could also have given your image a name by clicking on Export and chosen a different place to save the picture.) Figure 8 
For future reference: By clicking on Export, you can also designate where you would like your image to be saved if you want to put it in a particular file and not on your clipboard. You also have the option of changing the file type by clicking on “Save as type” and choosing from Windows Bitmap, JPEG, or TIFF (Figure 9). Figure 9 
13. Click, hold, and drag the image you extracted into the view screen. Don’t worry about the video clip you dragged there earlier. It will be removed automatically. You’re now going to add some text to your image and turn it into a title frame. 14. Click on the Text Animator button to the left of the view screen. It’s marked with the letters “ABC” (Figure 10). The Text Animator button is now looks like a button to show that it is activated. Figure 10 
15. At the bottom of your screen, a box has opened up on the left. Type in the title for your video there. To change the font for your title, click on the word “Font” and the dialog box will open to the right as in Figure 11. Make your changes to your font and then click OK. Next, click Apply. Figure 11 
NOTE: As soon as you clicked Apply, VideoWave added the picture to your storyline at the top of your screen. Special Effects for Titles: VideoWave has some “instant” cool effects for titles (Figure 12). To see these special effects, you have to click on the Effects tab. Choose one you like and click, hold, and drag it to the title screen you’re creating. Effects changes the style of your title. There are options at the bottom of the screen that you can play with to change color and duration. Figure 12 
While you’re experimenting, click on the Paths tab (Figure 13). The options under Paths allows you to change how your title will appear. Figure 13 
Duration of effect: You’ll notice that as soon as you dragged in an effect or a path, a solid red line appeared on the time slider under the view screen (Figure 12 or 13). This shows you the duration of that particular effect. You can alter that. Figure 14 shows the mouse cursor pointing at the in-point for the effect. Simply move the white triangle on the time slider to where you want the effect to start and click on the in-point button for special effects. Immediately to the right of that is the out-point button for special effects. Move the white triangle to where you want the effect to stop and click on the out-point. You can always change it if you don’t like it by repeating the process. Special Note: The two middle buttons - in and out for special effects are flanked by two other buttons that mark the in and out points for the video clip. The outer two buttons on the far left and the far right are for video editing. The middle two buttons are to create the start and stop points for special effects. Figure 14 
Editing Video Clips Now that we’ve added a title, we’re going to chop up our video into short segments. (By the way, you could always have done this first and added your title after – it doesn’t matter.) We’ll add our little segments to our storyline at the top of the screen by dragging them to where we want them and then when we are done, we’ll produce our video. 16. Return to your video library and click, hold, and drag the video clip you’re going to edit into the view screen. Note that single images have a small icon in the corner of the thumbnail that looks like an artist’s palette. Tips: a) It’s usually best to preview your video clip before editing so that you get an idea of what’s on it. Just click on the play button below the view screen that looks like a green arrow. You’ll get both video and audio in this mode. b) Keep a pencil and paper handy. Note down the start times and end times of each of the video chunks you want to include in your video. Remember that the time slider measures in thousandths of a second. c) When you are “editing” your video, what you are really doing is setting up little digital markers. You aren’t destroying your original video clip so don’t worry about making mistakes. 17. Once you’ve previewed your video, you’re ready to begin marking off your segments. Either play the video or move the white triangle to that point in the time slider where you want your first segment to begin. Click on the “Mark In-Point” button below the time slider (Figure 15). That sets where that video chunk will begin. The white triangle will instantly fly to the new beginning you have established. Next, move to where you want this first segment to end. Click on the “Mark Out-Point” button next to the second time code on the bottom row (Figure 15). Figure 15 
Now, move to the beginning of that segment (drag the white triangle to the beginning or click on the button to take you to the first frame). Click on play and see if there are any last changes you want to make before adding it to the storyline. If you made a mistake, click the reset button with the curved, backward arrow. 18. Once you’re satisfied with the editing on your first video segment, click, hold, and drag the video from the view screen to the storyline. Let go of the left mouse button when you have it in position on one of the brown rectangles. Each brown rectangle is another “scene” in your video. 19. Return to the video library and grab the same video clip (if it’s a long one) or another chunk of video into the view screen. Repeat the process outlined in #17 and #18 until you have finished with that chunk of video. If you want to get some other video clips, just right click on the video library, choose add files, and go back to the CD or wherever, to get additional video. You can mix video from multiple sources. Saving Your Work 20. By the way, you should save your work as you go along. To do that, click on the icon of the disk on the left side of the screen OR click on the word File (Figure 16) and then “Save As.” You won’t be saving your “movie.” Rather, what you will be saving are all of your production notes from which the movie will be compiled. Don’t skip this step. The production file notes take up almost no amount of space, but will save you hours of editing if something goes wrong when you produce your video. Note: If you want to get adventurous, skip to #24 to add transitions between your scenes and then come back and produce your movie. Leaving it plain is fine, too. Figure 16 
Producing the Video 21. When you have finished adding your video clips to your storyline, you are ready to produce it. Click on File, Produce (Figure 17). Until you get familiar with the way VideoWave works, I suggest you just click on Next and agree with the default (automatic) choices the software makes. Figure 17 
22. The Produce Movie dialog box lets you choose the movie template you will use (Figure 18). The default template is MPEG-1. This will produce a small file that can be read in both Mac and PC environments. All you have to do is click on Next. Watch for the Summary Page - there you need to give it a file name. Figure 18 
PAY ATTENTION: If you save your edited video clip in the same place and with the same name as the video clip you started with, it will over-write the original clip (wipe it out). The computer will question you if you try to do this, but it can’t stop you from destroying your original work. Think about establishing a folder for the movies you produce that is separate form the original footage. 23. Pay attention to the File Name line on the Summary Page dialog box (Figure 19). This tells you what your movie will be called and where it will be saved. Feel free to change anything here. Always be sure that you will have enough room to save your movie in the spot you have chosen. Make sure you are not going to save it on top of the original piece that you are working from. Figure 19 
Once you are satisfied with the location where the movie file will be saved and the name of the movie, simply click on Produce and find something to do for a few minutes. You’ll be able to watch the program count its way through the frames as it compiles your movie. It will leave it up on the screen ready for you to play it when it has been produced. The older the computer, the bigger the movie clip, the longer it will take. 24. Transitions: Here’s one of the items that people have a lot of fun with - the transitions between scenes in your movie. You can just leave it plain or you can jazz it up. Once you’ve got the scenes in your storyline, you can double-click on the little icon BETWEEN the scenes. That brings up the transitions menu and you’ll see some new options appear at the bottom of the screen. Move your mouse over any of the transition thumbnails and the computer will demonstrate that transition. If you find one you like, drag it to the small white transition box at the bottom of the screen. You can adjust the length of the transition by using the plus and minus signs next to the overlapping video clip icons. When you’re satisfied, click Apply and you’ll see the icon between the scenes change to represent that transition. Click on the Play button in the view screen to see the total effect. 25. Darkroom: With a video clip in the view screen, click on the Darkroom icon immediately below the Cutting Room icon. Believe it or not, you can play with the buttons at the bottom of the screen and adjust brightness, contrast, color and even the amount of red, green, and blue of your video clip. It is possible to salvage video that didn’t quite work out. Click Apply to keep your changes. 26. Special Effects: Moving down from the Darkroom icon, you’ll find the special effects icon. Again, just drag a special effect onto your video clip. Adjust the options at the bottom of the screen - color, effect level, where it will start, where it will hold, and where it will finish. 27. And more . . . There are a lot more options available. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Click on Help and Topic Select to get direct assistance or go to Start > Programs > MGI VideoWave > MGI VideoWave Manual and that will launch an HTML version of the manual along with tutorials! |