Using Video Game Footage - Part 4

Overview

Editing the Video

This article is not meant to teach someone how to edit a music video, as the user is already assumed to have that skill. Nor will this article teach how to use an editing program, such as Premiere or Media Studio Pro. Instead this section is about how to use these files effectively. Right now, the baseline files should be rather unwieldy and too large to use realistically. What we are going to do is create a smaller lower quality set of files, and build the video on that. And once the video is done being edited, replace the lower quality copies with the baseline and render out of the application. I currently have Adobe Premiere at home, and the examples I am doing work with it. I also assume that people have been using the directory structure that I had talked about earlier, since then it makes it easy to switch files.

First thing is to use VirtualDub to create the set of lower quality files. You should already be familiar with VirtualDub’s filter setup, and all we will be doing is creating copies of all of the baseline files at a smaller resolution such as 320x240, and a lower color depth like 16 Bit or 256 colors. Color Depth is accessed from the Video menu. You can, if you want, choose some compression CODEC that is lossy in this stage since nothing else will be derived from these files. The entire point of this section is to create lightweight files, so consider a CODEC with a very fast read rate, or maybe even uncompressed would work here since it scrubs incredibly fast. Put all of these files in a directory similar to the “baseline” files, and make sure that the file names match. A job list from VirtualDub would come in handy here.

Now this is the Premiere-specific section. In Premiere, choose the resolution settings and the compression settings to match the smaller files that you are using. And then edit your video. When you are done, save the project file and quit Premiere. In the file system, rename the directory that you stored the smaller files in to something... such as “offline”, and then rename the directory with your “baseline” files to what ever you named your offline files to. Then open the project back up, and change the project settings to match the “baseline” files. It will warn you that all preview files will have to be discarded, which is perfectly fine. Then simply render your video out to a single AVI file at the new and larger settings.

For other editing programs, such as Media Studio Pro, this same trick should work but since I do not use or own that program I cannot be sure. The concept is sound, and with a little bit of tinkering should be able to be applied to any application. I believe that Premiere even has a facility to switch between higher and lower resolution versions of files, with out having to resort to the directory swap trick, but my trick is simple, and should work with any editor… though you may have to delete that editors preview files.