Posts Tagged ‘Video Editing’

Adding a soundtrack to a video with Adobe Premiere CS6 and Audition CS6

Published by | Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

It’s a fact that Adobe Premiere CS6 and Audition CS6 tend to play nicely together. It’s this compatibility that makes it very easy and convenient to use these two applications together when working on a video project that has any sort of audio component. While Premiere does have some very basic audio editing functions, Audition is a much more fully-featured application for audio recording, editing, and mixing requirements. So, using Audition specifically for editing and mixing dialog, sound effects, music, and foley, is a good way to improve the sound of your video’s soundtrack.

When adding music to video, Audition makes it easy to create fade ins so your music doesn’t come in too quickly, fade outs so the music doesn’t end abruptly, and crossfades to smoothly transition between two pieces of music. It’s also very easy to make volume adjustments, like “ducking” the music track under a voiceover track so that the music doesn’t overpower the voiceover.

Audio fade-in being added to music in Audition CS6.

Audition makes it easy to create fade ins so your music doesn’t come in too quickly, fade outs so the music doesn’t end abruptly, and crossfades to smoothly transition between two pieces of music. Here, we see a fade in being added to a piece of music.

Editing a piece of music is also pretty simple in Audition. Grabbing the beginning or ending of a track to shorten or lengthen it is as simple as clicking and dragging. The snap feature in Audition also makes it really easy to align pieces of audio and video together.

In this tutorial from chapter eight of Audition CS6 Essential Training, author Garrick Chow shows you how to add soundtracks or audio clips to video files that have been imported into Audition—a great demonstration of how to utilize Audition and Premiere together.

 

Interested in more?
• All audio courses on lynda.com
• All courses by Garrick Chow on lynda.com
• All Audition courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Premiere Pro CS6 New Features
• Fundamentals of Video: Cameras and Shooting
• Finale 2012 Essential Training
• Foundations of Audio: Compression and Dynamic Processing

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Posted in Audio | 1 Comment »

After Effects Apprentice 15: Creating a 10-second promo video in After Effects

Published by | Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

In After Effects Apprentice 15: Final Project (the fifteenth, and final, course in the After Effects Apprentice series based on the second edition of Trish and Chris Meyer’s book After Effects Apprentice) you will pull together skills you’ve learned in the previous After Effects Apprentice lessons to create a real-world video promo. In the first half of the course Trish leads you through building the artwork and components used in the final piece, and then Chris demonstrates how to assemble your precompositions into a 3D world, timed to music. Skills covered include how to use masks, effects, shape layers, text, layered Illustrator files, blending modes, track mattes, collapsed transformations, nested compositions, motion blur, expressions, animation presets, audio, a 3D camera and light, and more.

Throughout the course, Trish and Chris share with you their process and thoughts as they design component elements, work towards assembling a final composition, and deal with handling change requests from clients. Chapters 11 and 12, the final two chapters of the course, are essentially mini-courses in themselves. In chapter 11, Chris breaks down several strategies for efficient rendering, including how to create versions for archiving, non-linear editors, widescreen, center cut, and the web, and chapter 12 dives into the process of recreating a dial Illustrator logo using shape and text layers inside After Effects.

Although After Effects Apprentice 15: Final Project concludes the After Effects Apprentice series, this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of Trish and Chris as they’ve already promised to update their After Effects Apprentice book based on the next version of After Effects, and afterward will release additional Apprentice videos covering the new features, plus a new final project.

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Posted in Video | 1 Comment »

How to create a camera shake in CINEMA 4D

Published by | Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Welcome back for another Design in Motion! This time around we’re going to have some fun in CINEMA 4D building a camera rig that will give you the ability to add very convincing multi-directional camera shake that is easy to control. Camera shake is an important component of animation. Just like motion blur, it adds a lot of realism to your movements.

Last week I introduced you to the idea of expressions in After Effects. CINEMA 4D also has an expression language—in fact—CINEMA 4D has three expression languages; Xpresso, Coffee, and Python. Don’t be alarmed, though—we won’t be writing code. We’re going to use the Xpresso language, which is a visual, node based way of making connections between objects and parameters.

Even though we’re building an easy to use camera rig, really, this technique is largely about the idea that you can use the Xpresso language to control objects and animation.

Interested in more?
• The full Design in Motion series in the Online Training Library®
• All 3D + animation courses in the Online Training Library®
• Courses on CINEMA 4D in the Online Training Library®
• Courses by Rob Garrott in the Online Training Library®

Suggested courses to watch next:
• CINEMA 4D: Rendering Motion Graphics for After Effects
• CINEMA 4D R12 Essential Training
• After Effects CS5.5 New Features

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Posted in 3D + Animation | No Comments »

Avid dot-release for Media Composer 5 now available

Published by | Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Avid recently released an update to its popular Media Composer 5 video editing software that fixes several bugs, including:

1) Default Segment Mode setting
The MC default for the timeline setting “Default Segment Tool” has been changed from overwrite to insert.

2) Copy/Paste Segment Mode fix
When copy/pasting mark in/out with no segment tool active, the paste mode will no longer be the last used segment mode but the default segment mode. Most editors want to paste in insert mode so unless an editor changes the default (insert), MC will paste in insert mode. The only time MC will paste in overwrite is if the user has only the segment overwrite tool active when paste is executed, as in versions prior to 5.

3) Smart Tools auto selection bug
A bug has been fixed that auto selected the default segment tool when an editor cut a marked in/out selection (Ctrl+X) with no segment tools active.

For information on how to obtain the 5.0.3.4 patch, go to Avid’s support area on its site: http://www.avid.com/US/support/downloads/

If you are a brand new user of Avid Media Composer 5, be sure to check out our crash course Avid Media Composer 5 Getting Started with Steve Holyhead. For a deeper dive, Avid Media Composer 5 Essential Training with Ashley Kennedy is also available.


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Posted in In the news, Video | 1 Comment »

Premiere Pro CS4 course shows how to tell better stories with creative editing

Published by | Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Images from Chapter 4, The Art of Video Editing

Several examples from Chapter 4, The Art of Video Editing. Clockwise from top, two clips from "House on Haunted Hill" with Vincent Price, Kuleshov's Effect, from "Amar el Cine," music video for the Zen Chemists, scene from "Ninja Death 3."

Premiere Pro CS4 Beyond the Basics with Chad Perkins is an exciting release for video editors, but I’d argue that there could be something for everyone in this course.

In Chapters 2 and 4 for instance, (Tips for Shooting Video, and The Art of Video Editing), Chad touches on key tips that anyone with a camera and a story to tell can use. From telling better stories through suggestive editing, to setting a mood using emotional cutaways, the importance of pacing, and thankfully, how to avoid bad edits.

A few other highlights that caught my eye were the chapter on Editing a Music Video, the advanced video concept of getting video to look like film (in Chapter 14), and the awesome creating a day-for-night shot in Chapter 7. (So that’s how they shoot all those night shots in movies!)

Chad also covers special effects, color correction, and keying and compositing, integrating all these concepts as he builds a music video project from scratch. Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Posted in Video | No Comments »