If you haven't already done so, please review Page One of this lesson and download all the required software for this lesson.

Preparing your video footage for editing.

To make things easier for you in this first lesson, I have prepared a few sample clips. These video clips may not be from a show or fandom that interests you, but that's not important. They're just something to play around with for this lesson. In Lesson Two you'll learn how make clips from your DVD of choice.

Each of these clips are around 3-4 MB each, and are around 15-25 seconds in length. Right-click to download each clip to your desktop. Put them all in a folder on your desktop called "Downloaded Video Clips." (If you don't know how to right-click to download, read this page.) It's important to download them ALL, because each clip is unique and I will discuss their individual qualities in this lesson. PLEASE NOTE: THESE DOWNLOADED CLIPS ARE NOT READY TO BE IMPORTED INTO VEGAS. You're going to convert them to something better and also possibly "fix" some of their problems.

• Doctor Who clip. (Thanks to seduff for the source clip.)
• North & South (BBC) clip.
• Sense and Sensibility (BBC) clip.
• Spooks (BBC) clip. (Thanks to spikesbint for the source clip.)
• Robin Hood (BBC) clip.

Open up MPEG Streamclip and open the "Doctor Who" clip.

You'll see that MPEG Streamclip is very much like any other media player. There's a playhead, which shows you at what spot in the video you're at (drag it right or left to move to a different spot in the video). There are play, reverse, and forward buttons.

 

Now you're going to trim down the clip to just the scene you want. For this lesson, trim down to a small scene, like perhaps 5-10 seconds. Use the playhead to scroll to where you want your trimmed clip to start.

Use the forward and back arrows on your keyboard (they are directly to the left of the number pad on your keyboard) to inch, inch, inch forward or backward, frame-by-frame, to get to just the right spot where you want your clip to start. Then press the "I" key on your keyboard. Then, scroll to the spot where you want your clip to end. Press the "O" key.

Now, go to File >> Export to AVI (ONLY IF YOU ARE USING VEGAS 9 or ABOVE). Otherwise, go to File >> Export to Quicktime. See screenshots below.

Use this setting if you have Vegas (Movie Studio or regular Vegas) version 9 or above.

Use this setting if you have Vegas 6, 7, or 8. (Movie Studio or Vegas Pro.)

Now, you'll be faced with with several different options for converting your first clip. Don't be worried about this, I'll tell you exactly what to do!

Use the top drop-down menu ("Compression") and select Apple Motion JPEG A from the list. ("Motion JPEG" is also commonly known as "MJPEG.")

 

Okay, here are the settings you'll need to use in this particular clip. Under the "Quality" setting, slide the bar anywhere from between 60% to 100%. I recommend sticking with something like 90%, for best results (with 100% the file size gets really large), but if you really need to conserve disk space, you can even go down to 40% in quality. Remember: the lower the quality percentage, the lower the file size, but also, the lower the picture clarity. Do tests to see what quality settings are acceptable to you.

Since all the clips you've downloaded are widescreen, check the box (under "Frame Size"—see green arrow) for 16:9. (That's widescreen.) The numbers by 16:9 will be different with your clips (the frame size will probably be 640x360). This is okay. As long as there's a 16:9 by the numbers, you're golden.

Make sure that the sound is set to "Uncompressed." If you don't want to use sound from the clip in your video (most of the time we don't—we're going to replace it with music) then you can select "No Sound."

Usually you will keep all the check boxes seen on the right (see purple text) unchecked. There will be two main exceptions, which will be explained in Lesson Two. Don't worry about that yet, just leave all those boxes unchecked.

Now you're ready save the video! Create a folder on your desktop called "MJPEG VIDEO CLIPS." Click on the "Make AVI" (or "Make Movie" if you're using Vegas 8 or below) button at the bottom right, choose to save your clip to the folder you just created, and wait for MPEG Streamclip to convert the video over.

To double-check to make sure this Doctor Who clip converted successfully, open the file in VLC Player (remember, it's one of the recommended programs you should have downloaded). If all went well, VLC will play the video. If you are on an older computer, do not be alarmed if the clip stalls or stutters a little bit when VLC plays it—this is not unexpected with older hardware playing videos with the MJPEG codec.

IF YOU CAN'T GET VEGAS TO RECOGNIZE YOUR MOV (or AVI) FILES:

Due to an annoying glitch in a newer version of Quicktime, your copy of Vegas may not recognize the MOV files you made following this tutorial. If that happens, try making a sample in AVI and see if that works. If neither AVI or MOV files are recognized by Vegas, please follow this alternative tutorial for making clips. The quality is just as good (it's just that the learning curve is a little higher).

Okay! Now you've converted your first clip over to an editable format.

But we have to convert the rest of the clips, and there are a few interesting things about them that you need to know . . .

"Why do we have to convert the downloaded sample files to something else? Why can't we use them as-is in Vegas?" Not all types of AVI (or MOV) files are good for editing. The kinds of AVI (or MOV, or MP4) files that are often downloaded off the internet are too compressed to be stable for editing in Vegas or other video software. (Again, this page explains more.) Therfore, you are converting these sample clips to a good codec (codec stands for compress/decompress) for editing. A lot of fan vidders are resistant to using larger-sized "editable" codecs (like DV AVI, Lagarith AVI, or MJPEG AVI or MJPEG MOV). They think that it's a bad thing that these kinds of files are bigger than the DivX, XviD AVI files or perhaps WMV files that they've been using. They don't yet understand that too often these smaller files can be the cause of headaches down the road. "But my friends edit with [XviD, DivX, WMV] and they aren't having any problems!" Yeah, and they won't have any problems until suddenly, they do have problems. One of the frustrating things about editing in these smaller-sized clips is that they seem to be working fine, until the day that they don't. They are unpredictable. "But these exact same codecs worked yesterday, so they cannot be the cause of any problems I'm having." That was yesterday. This is today. Read the entry above. "It's not a bad codec that's causing my editing problems (blank screen, crashing), it's . . . [a virus, all AVI files, my copy of Vegas is messed up]." Yes, it's the codec. No, it's not a virus. Of course all Windows-based editors will open AVI files; they just don't want to open some skanky AVI with a bad codec. Vegas will work great with MJPEG, DV AVI, or other files with right codec (compression). No, Vegas (or other video editing program) is probably not broken. It simply has decided to stop working with non-editable codecs. These tutorials will only be showing you how to prepare proper editing files, so you'll start out with good habits right from the start!

 

Page Three: Convert the rest of your clips, and learn about their frame rates and aspect ratio >>

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