22. Editing: Setting up a Video Project & Exporting Your Video
Moderator: Niotex
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Setting up a Video Project
Now that you have all your sources prepared, you need to set up a video project. Each program has a different set of options but many of the settings will be similar from program to program.
Before you dive into setting things up you need to make a note of the properties of your sources. We have gone through a lot of preparation stages to get here, so it's worth summarising what you have.
Video Format
This is the basic stuff. Firstly there are the standards NTSC, PAL and NTSC FILM. You should have an idea which one of these your footage is by now.
Then we have the file format standards. Most of you will be editing using Video for Windows. This is sometimes described as Microsoft AVI. DV users, however, will probably be using a special DV profile in their video editor unless they are editing using a Video for Windows DV codec with the DV footage contained in an avi file.
Video Properties
Hoipefully you should know the various properties of your video by now--the resolution, pixel aspect ratio, framerate, all that good stuff. You pretty much just make sure the project settings in your editing program line up with these. One important thing to note is that most editing software has a setting for field order. Since we have made our footage progressive, then you want to make sure that you set it to "no fields" or "progressive" in your application. Otherwise your software might introduce new interlacing into your footage when you insert special effects.
Audio Properties
This will depend on how you sourced your audio:
Wav files ripped from CD: These should always be 44,100Hz 16bit stereo uncompressed audio.
Wav files decoded from DVDs: These are likely to be (but are not always) 48,000Hz 16bit stereo uncompressed audio
Wav file converted or captured from an alternate source: These can have any properties. However, you should make sure that the wav file is uncompressed and make a note of the Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Stereo Channels of your audio. You can find simple info like this in any wave editor or winamp.
So those are the main things you will need to know for before editing your project. Because there is so much different editing software out there, and it keeps changing as new versions get released, it's not really worth going through the trouble of showing how to set things up for specific programs. It shouldn't be too difficult, but if you have trouble, feel free to ask about it on the forums.
I will specifically mention some tips for those of you using Windows Movie Maker though. It would be best if you make your footage 29.97fps and make it fit in a 640x480 frame. If you have widescreen footage then you will want to letterbox. This only applies to those using WMM.
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Exporting Your Video
It's not possible to have explicit exporting settings detailed for every single video editing application on the market, but just like with setting up your application, it should be fairly simple. Here are a couple rules of thumb:
1) Keep your export settings as similar to the project settings as possible.
2) Don't try to compress a distribution copy of your amv from your editing program!
You should export only a LOSSLESS, full quality version of your video. This means you should either use a lossless codec such as UtVideo, or export uncompressed. Some software, such as Premiere, has problems with exporting as anything other than uncompressed. You should also export your audio as a seperate wav file, if possible. Compressing your AMV is a seperate step that will be covered very soon in later pages of this guide.
Those two steps are really the only major things that you need to watch out for. Now, if you are unfortunate enough to be using Windows Movie Maker, it is different enough to require it's own guide:
Windows Movie Maker 2
Otherwise, if you are having trouble, just come and ask on the forums.
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Video Distributions and Post Production
You've exported your video from your editing package. Good. Of course, if you've done things right you will probably have a file that is several gigabytes in size. You are more than likely eager to compress this to something you can use to put online or send to a convention.... but don't be hasty as there are still a lot of things you should do to prepare your footage for distribution.
In order to post-process footage, we are going to return yet again to Avisynth. This is the best post-processing tool around. Now at this point your file should be an avi, and it should either be uncompressed, or compressed with a lossless codec like UtVideo. What you should do is import avi file into an avisynth script with an AVISource command like this:
AVISource("yourexport.avi")
This should show you your video in it's full resolution glory... it looks great, but it still needs work.
The post production options you choose will depend on what type of distribution you want to encode. Most people will want to make two kinds of distribution encode - one for distribution on the internet and another for distribution to conventions.
As most of the differences will be in how you prepare your avs file, you may want to make two avs files - one for the internet distribution and another for the convention one.
Please make sure you read through every step carefully as each step is important if you want to get the right result.
Now, what exactly still needs to be done?
1) If your video has any interlacing (and it should NOT, if you followed this guide--if interlacing was introduced when you exported your video then you may want to check over your export settings), you need to remove the interlacing now. The exception is if you are going to keep your video interlaced for display on a television, or if you are sending it to a convention that accepts interlaced videos.
2) If you are going to be encoding your video for online distribution, you may need to do some cropping and resizing, if you didn't already take care of that earlier.
3) You can sometimes make your video look significantly nicer by cleaning it up some with AVISynth.
4) Do you need to encode your video for online distribution, or for a convention, or for both? If you are going for online distribution, then you will probably want to encode your video to H.264.