How do you do that then?

I though it might be interesting to have a look at some of the processes used in editing a project. It is all very well wandering about with a camera and getting hours of footage but chopping it together to make it intereting and to follow some sort of story is the hardest part in many ways.

I use a program called Sony Vegas it is what is known as a non linear editing program. This means that you can drop things in in any order you like, in the days of editing real tape by using two video machines it was very difficult to edit in any way other than by compilling shot after shot in the finished order from the very start of the process.

I've taken a couple of screen grabs and added some explanations which is what follows this. Unless you have an enormous monitor for your computer you will need to click on the image which should make it appear in a seperate window but larger.

Hope it makes sense, I'll come back to this another time. Here are the two screen grabs but largerto make them easier to read.

The whole 40 minutes.

One minute and a bit.

Rock lobster

I've been working on the Cob Widening DVD today, work on the Cob is getting on for finished and we will be releasing all of Dr Spinola's time lapse sequences as one epic. On the DVD we will speed them up by 4 times and the 16 times and then 64 times. This sounds like a waste but you actually get a completely different sense of the work going on at the different speeds. Included on the disk will be a 15 minute version of my Youtube reports covering the whole construction process. It is this that I've been editing today.

I've also been out with the camera getting some more shots to add to the finished report, I went over to Snowdon Wharf and got some long shots.

This was the view from the wharf early on in the work.

This was about mid day today, you can see the progress in the rock armour.

A couple of hours later and the sun had come out so a walk accross the Cob was in order; sunshine makes such a difference to a picture.

I've also made a fist attempt at the cover artwork. It needs a barcode generating and adding but apart from that I'm pretty happy with it.

The cover picture is a still taken by Andrew Thomas rather than a video frame, these don't always blow up well enough to make a cover from. I was standing beside him videoing when he took it though.

The dancing gnomes of Boston Lodge

The good news is that I found my missing viewfinder and it has just slipped back on the camera, a big relief.

The other good news is that some rare footage of the Boston Lodge gnomes has come to light...

Some pics from Sunday

Back in the office today, (knee still slightly sore.) Had a quick look at what I shot on Sunday, here a couple of stills from then.

Britomart departing for Tan y bwlch

Taliesin and Lyd refuelling

Tal and Lyd on the cob with the return trip to Blaenau

143, Tal and Lyd from upstairs in Harbour Station

Now to find out part numbers for the missing view finder and order replacements.  Doh!

Lots of trains and a sore knee

I had a mixed day yesterday. The day started with fog and torrential rain but cheered up by lunchtime. This was good as there were trains on both the FR and the WHR which were all part of a private charter. A railtour had discharged its passengers at Llandudno Junction half of whom then travelled by coach to Caernarfon and the other to Blaenau, both trains then head for Porthmadog where all 400 people get off the trains, mill about and get back on the other train so that everyone gets to ride on both railways... if you see what I mean.

All this coming and going meant that Lyd and Taliesin and 143 were on the main trains, Criccieth Castle was station pilot and to add some excitement to the whole thing, Britomart had a seperate charter train that ran to Tan y bwlch and the back to Beddgelert.

I ran about with the camera and shot most of the comings and goings. The last movement was to be Lyd and Tal going back to Blaenau so I trotted off to the middle of the cob to get a nice long shot and some cob widening shots too. As the train passed me by I tried to pan round to get the train departing but tripped and fell over. In the process I twisted my ankle, hurt my knee and my pride and snapped a bit of the camera off. I didn't notice this last point until I was back in the office and by the time I had walked back to where I had been there was no sign of the missing part of the view finder. I got some nice pictures though.

Fog and Rain - editing weather

Lyd was taking a charter train up the WHR today and had the weather been nice my plan was to follow the train and get some action packed footage... however it was foggy and rainy and generally horrid. I got a couple of shots of the train leaving Port and then retired to the office with a coffee and a bacon bap to edit yesterdays footage.

Fortunately Paul Lewin can talk the hind legs off a donkey which is an ideal talent for talking to the camera, he also knows his way round Lyd. This made my job editing the last chapter for 'Lyd - A new locomotive' pretty straight forward. Something which people who are new to making videos often overlook are 'cut aways'. These are shots which can be edited into a sequence to cover a clumsy join or just to add some detail. Before Paul arrived I had about eight cut aways of things like numberplates, valve gear and the loco chimney smoking. In fact if you look at the lower of yesterdays pictures you can see I am videoing the chimney cap.

One of the shots I got today was a close up of the name plate. I did the same yesterday but the loco was cold and the plate had not yet been polished so it looked dull; today it was shiny and looked much better. By the magic of television I can slip this in instead of the dull one.

While I rendered this final chapter I had a couple of tweaks to do to the introduction. Once these two were both finished I added them to the DVD burning package and again rendered the whole project to a finished file and burned a couple of trial disks. One I took down stairs to the shop to have a look at and make sure that it played OK and looked and sounded as I expected, the other copy I have taken home with me to watch through on my TV to look for stupid errors. Before it can go on sale it will need to be checked over for spelling and grammar mistakes and in case there is anything shown which should not be. Proofing videos is not as easy as you may think as the caption generator doesn't have spell checker and my spelling is awful; fear not, grown ups will be involved before it hits the streets. (Mind you it didn't stop us selling hundreds of copies of a DVD with a 'Golen Bolts Ceremony' on the menu page... oops.)

Taking the Lyd off

I'm back at Harbour Station now and I've uploaded all the footage I shot this morning and edited one of the two packages I went to shoot. The one I've finished is being rendered as I type; this means it is being reduced from the individual shots in their edited order complete with sound tracks and video overlays to one single file. In this instance it is a WAV so that it can be uploaded to Youtube. This package won't be available to the public but has been made to show some of the work Boston Lodge can do to a potential customer abroad.

This is Paul Lewin talking to the camera about prepping Lyd for a trip out tomorrow. He has a radio clip microphone on so that his speech is recorded cleanly and at a consistent level. This is recorded onto one audio channel on the camera while the second is taking the ambient sound via the camera mounted mic. When I get to edit this chapter I will also use some stereo ambient sounds which I recorded separately on a small digital audio recorder. Using the editing software I can balance all three sources to make a convincing audio track.

You can see the radio receiver mounted on top of the camera with the two small aerials sticking up.

Stones and then more stones

I've been starting to put together Dr Spinola's time lapse pictures into a format that will work on video. This includes adding the date and 'chapterising' the whole thing. I've got as far as day 27 at the moment.

One of the ideas for a way to release the time lapse sequence is to have a separate DVD with the whole thing on at various frame rates so that it plays at different speeds. The fastest I've sped it up to so far means that the 27 days takes about 21 seconds. The tide coming and going looks like waves. It looks amazing and the rock just shoots out along the Cob.

Tomorrow I'm off to Boston Lodge to shoot the final chapter of the new Lyd video. This will be Paul Lewin talking about the loco while preparing it for a run to Caernarfon on Friday, depending on the weather I may go and get some shots of this too.

First Post

Welcome along to my new blog.

Thought it was time to start letting you know what the F&WHR camera has been pointed at and what the mouse that edits has been up to.

So far this week I've been mostly moving office so not much useful work but I have found the sound recorder I've been looking for for a couple of weeks.