Edit to the Maxx - The Art of the Digital Cut - Part 5

Power-up your camcorder or deck and plug the FireWire cable into it and then into your computer. Launch FreeDV. When FreeDV is launched, the application will connect to the Internet and present Go or Later buttons. Click the Later button.

Now you will be presented with the Select Project dialog box.

Select the Project you previously created and click the OK button.

You may now see one or more informational boxes. Click OK. You likely will then see a dialog box appear. Click Cancel.

Multiple Free DV windows will now open on the screen. They should be in the same arrangement you used the last time you used Free DV. If the arrangement is not the same, issue the Tools > Capture command to open the Capture Tool window.

You will see the Select Tape dialog box open. You should see tape T01 listed and selected. Click OK. The four clips you will see in the SuperBin will be the one you captured in Lesson 4.

To Close a Bin, select it and clicking the [Close button] or The entire SuperBin will disappear.

Close the Lesson 4 Bin.

Delete the Lesson 4 Bin. The entire SuperBin will disappear.

To open a Bin, SINGLE-click on its name in the Project window.

Now open the Thaipusam Bin.01. You will see the clip you captured in Lesson 2.

Extract Subclips
Click, in the SuperBin, on the clip icon from the capture you performed in Lesson 2.

Now, issue the Bin > DV Scene Extraction command. Select Create Subclips and click OK.

The Bin will be filled with subclips—each holding a segment of video recorded between each press of the camcorder’s trigger button.

You should find the subclips to the right of the “master” clip.

 

Drag the tape’s (e.g., Thaipusam Bin.01) picon (not a subclip picon) to the Lesson 3 Bin leaving only the subclips as shown below. Drag the subclips into a nice row as shown below.

 

Thai Pusam Muruga Festival
I shot the DV video I am using for this tutorial at the Batu Caves Temple on the outskirts ofKuala Lumpur,Malaysia. The Thai Pusam festival commemorates the day Lord Siva's consort, the goddess Parvathi, gives her son, Murugan, the vel (lance) to vanquish three demons. After ritual cleansing at a stream at the foothills, devotees (and photographers) climb the 272 steps accompanied by family and friends.

 

As captured by my video, several hundred devotees spear their cheeks with long, shiny steel rods and pierce their chests and backs with small, hook-like needles. "The belief in Lord Murugan is what prevents pain and bleeding," says Krishna Vadyar, a priest at the temple. However it works, I never saw any blood, nor did anyone seem to be experiencing pain.

This Week’s Shooting Tip
Your assignment for next week is to shoot 15 minutes of video. After each shot is recorded, be sure to wait 5 seconds and press Pause. Begin recording 5 seconds before the action starts. These 5-second segments are called “handles” and they give you some extra footage before and after each shot.

If you start recording and realize the shot is not what you want, do not keep shooting until the action starts again. Press Pause and the when ready press Pause again to start recording. You will easily be able to find and discard the “no good” shot.

Then capture this tape into a Bin with a short name. Then use Scene Detect to fill the Bin with Subclips. Now you will be ready to start serious editing.

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Steve Mullen owns Digital Video Consulting located in Las Vegas. DVC has been supporting videographers for over a decade with seminars, consulting, training, and tutorials. A Contributing Editor for Video Systems for many years, he has also written for A/V Video, Camcorder, DV, Etown, millimeter, The Perfect Vision, Video Pro, and Video Review. Steve taught at Rutgers University and the University of the Arts, and most recently has published two eBooks: the Sony HDV Production Guide and the JVC ProHD Production Guide.