Video Paper Builder - Video Basics

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IMPORTANT NOTICE - There are several major issues with VideoPaper Builder. View our Known Issues page for descriptions of the issues and work-arounds.

The Basics

When the standard for home video was VHS, or even, in some cases, Hi-8, transferring video into a digital format and editing the results was an arduous, expensive process. Now that digital videocameras are more widely accessible, video is captured directly in digital format. This takes one step out of the process, "digitizing" video. Still, it may seem complicated to transfer your video onto your computer and then edit it into a file that can be viewed in a web browser. We will try to explain some of the basics of this process here; there is a vast amount of further information available online.

For Mac users, Apple iMovie is included on every new iMac, iBook, PowerBook, Power Mac G5 and eMac. Apple has examples, tutorials, and other related information available on the Apple website at www.apple.com/imovie/. This software is an easy to use drag-and-drop digital video editing tool that will allow you to import digital video directly from your videocamera by connecting a Firewire cable between your camera and computer, edit the files (trimming for time, adding transitions and text) and then export(or save) your video as a compressed(small in file size) Quicktime video file. It also can save specific instances of video as single images. iMovie has both basic and advanced user capabilities for exporting your video; at first, try the "Export to Quicktime" and the "CD-ROM movie, medium" format. This will generate a Quicktime-compatible file (which the VideoPaper Builder requires) and will size it at 320x240 pixels, a reasonable size for viewing within the VideoPaper. Later, you may wish to experiment with "Expert" settings; within these settings the parameters for size, quality, audio compression, etc., can be edited.

For users who already have digital video on their computer and need to do basic editing, such as resizing or moving segments to different places in the timeline, QuickTime Pro is Apple's cross-platform basic digital video editing software. The free Quicktime viewer is most likely already on your computer; upgrade to Quicktime Pro for $29.99 on the Apple website.

Windows users: Microsoft Windows Movie Maker (included with Windows XP)is similar to Apple iMovie in that digital video can be directly imported and edited. Detailed descriptions and tutorials are available on the Microsoft website. Video files may need to be imported into Quicktime Pro and saved as .mov files to work with VideoPaper Builder.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When saving your final QuickTime video and placing it in your VideoPaper folder, make certain to save it as a self-contained file. To do this, open your video. Under "File", choose "Save As". In that dialog box, give your video a new name and check the "Save as Self Contained File" box. This will save a copy of your video that does not include links to other elements that you my have imported into it (captions, cut-and-pasted segments, images, etc.) It is tempting to save a "referenced" file, because of the much lower file size, but don't be fooled: a "referenced" file is only small because it does not contain all the necessary information; this will lead to headaches later on when trying to publish your videopaper!

Additional Digital Editing Systems:

Apple Final Cut Pro (all open in a new window)
Avid XPress DV
Adobe Premiere
Media 100
Roxio Easy Media Creator

Information on adding captioning to digital video:

Captioning is a helpful addition to digital media used in VideoPapers. It serves both to make video more accessible to users with disabilities, and to clarify the content of hard-to-hear or very rapid conversation. Captioning also serves as a search mechanism--by scrolling through the video, one is able to locate specific instances of phrases, etc.

So, how does one add captioning to a segment of digital video? It isn't as hard as it sounds. There are tools available to make the process much easier than it once was. The basic steps are:

create a digital video clip
transcribe the video
add "timecode" to each utterance (ie, mark at what time each person makes a statement)
add code to final transcript which will cause your video player to turn it into a "movie", with each utterance appearing at the marked time
paste this movie into your digital video.

Steps 3 and 4 can be done in a text editor using a stopwatch. However, they can be made much easier by using a Caption Editing software, such as Captioning Wizard included with VPB3.

Additional Captioning Software:

MAGpie: Media Access Generator
Caption Editor available as a free download from the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) website, at http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/. The website includes full documentation and a listserv of users. See the NCAM MAGpie website for more information on captioning.

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Last Update: 07/15/2005 Maintainer: VPB Webmaster (webmaster@concord.org)