Another Editing Blog

      Yesterday was the first day we were able to edit. Thanks to my simple plans I was able to get my commercial done in one day. I ran into only a few problems, all of them dealing with the software being used. I've already outlined my concerns with the software multiple times and it's safe to say it was a lot worse than I thought. To start, it was painfully slow, a simple act such as changing tabs would take up to 10 seconds. Then there was the need to wait 20 seconds every time a change was made to a piece of footage, doing anything else before would result in a crash. Which happened multiple times, during instances unrelated to the waiting. The library, where the footage was held, had separate tabs for images, video effects, and actual footage, would close my main media tab whenever I imported anything else in. This would be solved by clicking an 'add tab' button, which was tiny, to add it back. Despite these hurdles, I was able to complete the commercial.
      While editing, after moving past the problems, I didn't use too many techniques. The most used technique was cutting clips, followed by fading in and out from/to black. Using the timeline was simple, it was the same as any other program. As I had no other group members, I did all the editing. This allowed me to change plans and adjust to the limitations more easily. For example, I figured it'd be a bit risky to mess with the video effects, so I decided to leave the commercial in full color. I thought it'd be risky as the program spared no chance to crash on me, and would do so multiple times. Another example being the music, I wasn't able to find something online that was slow but still fit the songs in the official commercials. So I settled for another song that was a lot faster pace. This decision ended up working with the one to keep the color, as the black and white would contrast with the high energy background.
      When dealing with the voice over, the timing was hard to get down. Deciding where the clip should go was easy, but placing it there would sometimes be impossible. The program doesn't let you place media freely. Instead, it would snap it to the start or end of the nearest clip, regardless of which layer it was on. This made what could've been a 10-20 minute project go over that time. I spent a good amount of time trying to line up the audio to where it wasn't too late or too early. Timing them with the start of a new shot would cause the lines to play too far apart. So I had to doctor it a bit and kinda get it to where the lines would seem natural. In the end I was able to get it somewhere comfortable and render it. The project is still saved and I can go back and make adjustments anywhere necessary.