Vidding for Dummies, aka Vidding Tech for People Who Hate Vidding Tech

[talitha78]

On my last post, bop_radar and I started a little discussion on our vidding processes, and it’s prompted me to want to ramble a bit. I am the first to admit I dislike/don’t understand vidding tech, and that it is frequently a barrier to creativity for me. But tech is an inescapable part of vidding, and I have to bite the bullet and work through it in order

Comments

[bop_radar]

Western Digital My Book External Hard Drive (1 terabyte)
Mmmmph. *JEALOUS*

Ok, now I'll read the rest... :D

[talitha78]

Actually, the 1TB drive wasn't all that expensive when I bought it (circa $300), and memory is getting cheaper every day...

[pwolf]

You are saving your master video in DV? if you're already using huffyuv for your clips, you should export it with huffyuv. It'll only be a couple hundred mbs more (depends on the footage of course). This will maintain the quality of the video. DV is not uncompressed so as soon as you save it as DV, you are loosing information. You could also use Lagarith as it is lossless as well but will give you smaller file sizes compared to huffyuv. Also, you should set your premiere project to use huffyuv too. that would make it render previews faster as it doesn't have to re-encode unless you had some fades or other effects on the timeline.

Just some tips i hope will help.

[talitha78]

DV is not uncompressed so as soon as you save it as DV, you are loosing information

Heh. I didn't know that. I will change my statement above.

if you're already using huffyuv for your clips, you should export it with huffyuv

I have tried exporting my master video as huffyuv. It caused my computer to crash. :) But I'll fiddle around with it some more.

Also, you should set your premiere project to use huffyuv too

Ahhhh, see, I don't know how to do that. I'm a bit hopeless, actually. :P

Thanks for the tips, though.

[pwolf]

Do what ever works for you. :P

[talitha78]

:) That's the only way I get by!

[darlulu]

I put all of the heavy-duty work in at the front end, which makes the actual editing go surprisingly quickly.

Me, too! I didn't 'get' clipping when I first started out vidding, but now I know I couldn't do without it. All the prep that goes into making the vid is what makes the actual vidding so much fun for me.

Also: I just received your postcard from New Zealand and wanted to say a big thank you! I must admit it is always exciting when I receive actual mail in the mailbox that isn't bills/junk. That's always been part of the fun of holidays and birthdays for me. I mean, email is great and all, but it really is nice every so often to receive a 'hard copy,' you know? :D

[talitha78]

All the prep that goes into making the vid is what makes the actual vidding so much fun for me

Exactly! Once I get to editing, I just whiz along. Barring any creative angst, of course.

LOL. I'm glad you finally received the postcard. It only took 6 weeks to get to you. It must have been on the slow boat over. :P

[dahliablue]

This is excellent! I've been vidding for two years, but never graduated from WMM for fear of head explosion. I'm not very technically inclined and I've had trouble grasping info needed to move on to Sony Vegas (a present to myself, which is collecting dust!).

Two of the biggest issues for me are storage for source and clipping. After dragging and dropping entire episodes into WMM, I'm afraid I'm far too spoiled. But the last two vids I made with WMM tried to kill me with all the problems because I was trying to push the program beyond its limits. It's time to move on. Reading this really helped!

I'm sticking this baby in my memories. Thank you!

[talitha78]

Oh, cool! I'm so glad it was helpful to you. If nothing else, I thought it would be reassurance to my fellow non-techies that someone else is out there fighting in the trenches, too. :)

Two of the biggest issues for me are storage for source and clipping

Well, my solution for storage was to throw some money at the problem and get a huge hard drive. I don't know if that will be possible for everyone. :)

And clipping is a drag, I'm not gonna lie. But I have resigned myself to it. And I get a lot of TV-watching done while I'm in the clipping mode, so that's one plus!

[kitkatbyte]

I clip the same and compress with Huffy, but I like your idea of deleting what you don't want and saving the rest! I'm always going through and marking the beginning and end of what I want and saving that, and I end up with a lot of individual clips. Your way might be a bit faster since you don't have to save so many times.

[talitha78]

I'm always going through and marking the beginning and end of what I want and saving that, and I end up with a lot of individual clips

Well, I think you can batch things, but I've never tried, so I couldn't tell you how (I'm so bad; I see these things that might be useful, but if they aren't applicable to the immediate situation at hand, I don't mess with them). With my method, I get one huffy file per VOB file. So it helps with organization, too.

[kitkatbyte]

You can batch things, but you still have to go through and save every clip. All batch mode does it let you have vdub do all the saving work all at once. It is useful sometimes, like when you are converting a lot of large files and want to walk away from your computer for a few hours.

[talitha78]

Ah. *takes notes*