Suzanne wants to organize her home movies, which include her wedding (figure A), the birth of her niece and her nephew's recent birthday party, all recorded on different formats. The oldest are on VHS tape, while the newer ones are on DV. The goal is to trim these down to the highlights and create a manageable archive. By transferring everything onto a DVD, she has to worry about only one format.To edit the VHS tape, the digital video camcorder is used as a bridge between the VCR and the computer.
Tip: Almost all new camcorders also function as VCRs.
Steps:1. Load a new DV tape into the camcorder.
2. Choose the VCR function on the camera (figure B).
3. Load the tape to be transferred into the VCR.
4. Hit the record button on the camcorder and the play button on the VCR.
5. When all the footage has been transferred from the VHS tape, connect the camcorder to the computer with the firewire cable. Firewire is essential for fast transfer of video into the computer.
6. Open the video-editing software and hit import; this automatically triggers the camcorder to start playing the newly created dub and loads it into the computer's hard drive.
7. Suzanne then uses the video-editing software to select three minutes of highlights from roughly 40 minutes of the original footage loaded into the computer.
8. Like most every other software of its type, the program allows her to organize the highlights in what is called a timeline. A timeline simply determines the order in which the video clips will play (figure C).
9. The software also has the built-in capability to create titles. Suzanne starts at the beginning of the first piece of video in the timeline, which is the footage of her niece, and chooses a simple onscreen title that tells her the content of the clip (figure D).10. To create the title page, she must first decide on a background. Many video-editing programs come with a variety of backgrounds already built into the software. Suzanne chooses basic black (figure E), which is pleasing to the eye and neutral enough to not contrast with the video that follows the title page.
11. Next, she selects the lettering, which is commonly called the font style. Again the software gives several options. The goal is to choose a font that is easily readable. Here, the font size is chosen with a sliding scale.
12. The lettering is positioned in the center of the page.
13. If you want something that is more artistic, that's relatively easy to create as well. You can freeze-frame a picture from your video to use as a background.
Tip: It's best to choose a picture where the action is concentrated in the lower portion of the screen. This creates a logical place on the top of the screen to insert the title.
14. Choose the bold option of the font to better separate the title wording from the background. And even though Suzanne's title appears white (figure F), the lettering is a shade of light gray (figure G). This shading is necessary because on most televisions sets true white will look like it is tearing due to the complete absence of color.15. Today's video-editing programs also provide a wide variety of special effects that are available with a simple mouse click. For example, if desired, the colors in the title frame can be changed to black-and-white or sepia or even into a style called posterization.
16. Finally, decide how to transition from the title page to the video itself. A simple option is to use the preset page-turner effect (figure H), which peels away the title page as if a book is being opened.
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