Frame by Frame: OPTA Videos, Part 3 — Editing and Distribution

(Time to Read: 5 mins.)

(This is part three of a three-part series cov­er­ing video pro­duc­tion for an elearn­ing project. Part 1 cov­ers pre-pro­duc­tion plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion, and Part 2 cov­ers pro­duc­tion, aka “shoot­ing”.)

With the video shoot­ing phase (aka “pro­duc­tion”) com­plet­ed, we now had to re-assem­ble all the shots into their intend­ed order.

After back­ing-up all the footage, the job ahead was to review hun­dreds of shots and assem­ble them into a rough edit. This is where the shot list and direc­tor’s notes were cru­cial dur­ing video edit­ing.

Clip Backup and Review

With­out going into detail about which edit­ing soft­ware I use, I’ll cov­er the steps tak­en to assem­ble scenes into sequence:

First, back up all your footage! Copy it from your cam­era or SD card(s) and put if some­where. Don’t do any­thing else until you’ve done the back­ups first.

Reac­quaint your­self: Take time to review the footage. After going through the hec­tic and almost dizzy­ing activ­i­ty of a video shoot, man­ag­ing last-minute adjust­ments or changes to the script, it’s a good idea to refresh your­self on all the footage you’ve shot and get your head back into the intend­ed nar­ra­tive of the video.

Start insert­ing with the date/time of your footage. Usu­al­ly, video clips are date/­time-stamped. Most cam­eras store video clips using the date and time in the file­name. Start at the begin­ning with the ear­li­est date/time and see if that’s the first shot that you need. Most of your relat­ed takes should fol­low chrono­log­i­cal­ly from there.

If the above “chronol­o­gy” rule does­n’t hold true (like, you went back on Day 2 and reshot sequences that you for­got to do on Day 1), then you’ll need to search through your lat­er clips for the pick-up shots that are relat­ed.

If it’s con­fus­ing remem­ber­ing which video clips go into a par­tic­u­lar sequence, cre­ate a log file in Excel: list the file­names of the clips in the order you’ll need to add them to your video project. (This can also be a life­saver if your video edit­ing project ever gets cor­rupt­ed.) Some advanced video edit­ing tools (like Pre­miere Pro) may give you log­ging tools for this, but even a plain text file is bet­ter than hav­ing no log at all…

Assembling a rough edit

Basi­cal­ly, assem­bling a rough edit means adding the clips into your video project and then trim­ming and adjust­ing each clip for tim­ing and dura­tion. Edit­ing is often an iter­a­tive process of refine­ment: add, edit, review, add, edit, review, etc.

Fixing issues and harmonizing shots

As I added and arranged the order of the footage, I began to look for com­mon qual­i­ty issues that might have been over­looked dur­ing the shoot. For exam­ple, lit­tle annoy­ing back­ground nois­es in the audio, or shad­ows or incon­sis­ten­cies in the light­ing, or lit­tle cam­era shakes that had not been noticed before. Our ears can­not always hear the hum of the ceil­ing ven­ti­la­tion, and we may not notice that a large truck bar­rel­ing down the road out­side actu­al­ly made the build­ing trem­ble a lit­tle bit. It can be easy to miss a change in the qual­i­ty of the light that hap­pens as we phys­i­cal­ly move clos­er to an object for a real­ly tight zoom. (Are we our­selves cast­ing a shad­ow on the sub­ject? Are we no longer under that same over­head light as we were before? Are we stand­ing a bit far­ther away from that win­dow for that sec­ond take?)

The edit­ing phase is the time to try and fix com­mon errors and improve the har­mo­niza­tion of your shots, so that the colour, light, and sound are all at a sim­i­lar lev­el of qual­i­ty. If your video edit­ing soft­ware has noise reduc­tion, colour adjust­ment, or image sta­bi­liza­tion tools, use them to smooth out visu­al bumps and to keep your audio sound­ing sharp and your imagery look­ing con­sis­tent.

Cam­eras and micro­phones are unfor­giv­ing wit­ness­es. Tiny visu­al issues can become ampli­fied to your audi­ence, espe­cial­ly if your video gets dis­played on a big screen in front of a class­room. Watch­ing on a large mon­i­tor with good bright­ness and res­o­lu­tion can help you notice fine visu­al details. Lis­ten­ing to the audio using over-the-ear head­phones can make it eas­i­er to pick up changes in audio vol­ume or clar­i­ty.

Bet­ter that you notice these issues and fix them before your audi­ence does. As visu­al con­sumers, we’re all used to watch­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-made video from big-bud­get tele­vi­sion and stream­ing ser­vices. You’ll be unlike­ly to ever match the qual­i­ty of pro­fes­sion­al broad­cast or film pro­duc­tions, but the more care­ful­ly you edit and fix issues, the more like­ly your video will be effec­tive and engag­ing to your audi­ence.

Previewing and getting feedback

Once you’ve got your first rough cut assem­bled, you’ll want feed­back from your stake­hold­ers. You usu­al­ly can­not final­ize the edit of the video with­out get­ting some feed­back.

My col­lege uses the Kaltura media host­ing plat­form to store and man­age videos cre­at­ed by thou­sands of employ­ees and stu­dents. One of the ways Kaltura lets users access and pub­lish their videos is through a YouTube-like por­tal called “Medi­a­Space”. To dis­trib­ute rough-cut ver­sions of videos to the OPTA team, I cre­at­ed a chan­nel in our Medi­a­Space por­tal and pub­lished the videos to that chan­nel. That allowed me to email each stake­hold­er a sin­gle URL which would lead them to log into the Medi­a­Space chan­nel where they could secure­ly pre­view the videos as they were com­plet­ed to that point.

Clar­i­ty and Objec­tiv­i­ty: Video is a mul­ti-media expe­ri­ence, incor­po­rat­ing imagery, motion, speech, music, and pac­ing. All of those ele­ments can be eval­u­at­ed sub­jec­tive­ly in one way or anoth­er, and describ­ing them to each oth­er dur­ing deci­sion-mak­ing can some­times be like using a thou­sand words to describe a sin­gle image. Prov­ing edit­ing direc­tions in writ­ten form can cause con­fu­sion and lead to mis­takes. For clar­i­ty, I encour­aged our stake­hold­ers to always refer to changes using start and end times (mm:ss) in the video time­line:
e.g. “At 02:05, where the title slide starts, could you make that slide 5 sec­onds longer?”, or “Could you move the scene at 10:02 to be after the one at 13:05?”.

Pac­ing, Tone and Style: Edit­ing is actu­al­ly part of the design process of a video, and can have a huge impact on over­all the tone and effec­tive­ness of sto­ry­telling. It can be dif­fi­cult to fore­see exact­ly what a fin­ished video will look or feel like, so get­ting feed­back from the deci­sion-mak­ers on the team is a big deal. (Who­ev­er’s pay­ing for it will expect that any­way.)

Spell-check­ing, Nam­ing, and Ter­mi­nol­o­gy: This is the phase in which to con­firm the nam­ing and titling of things. Get feed­back on the ter­mi­nol­o­gy you’re using on title slides or over­lays. If you need to add a music track or third-par­ty audio effects, make sure they’re licensed by your insti­tu­tion or are cre­ative com­mons or in the pub­lic domain.

Involv­ing Stake­hold­ers in the Edit­ing Process: Some­times, hav­ing the project leader sit with you dur­ing the edit­ing process can be help­ful, but it also may not be prac­ti­cal. I’d prob­a­bly go as far as hold­ing a Zoom or Teams video call to share my screen and dis­cuss edit­ing choic­es with one or more of the key stake­hold­ers.

It’s pos­si­ble that your stake­hold­ers won’t have time to review the rough cuts and won’t pro­vide you much feed­back until lat­er in the edit­ing process. For the most part, trust your judge­ment, let them know how you intend to pro­ceed in case you don’t hear from them, and then be pre­pared for minor edit­ing tweaks to come lat­er on.