Making a video

Exporting slides from PowerPoint

[Slides can be directly made in Premiere Pro. But if you are comfortable making slides in Powerpoint first, and then importing them to Premiere, read this section]

Export slides as images with desired resolution for video. It's best to pick the resolution that matches the preset option you choose in Premiere Pro. To change your slides in Power Point to the desired resolution, use this chart to set the width and height of your slides in inches. Afterwards, you'll need to fix the font sizes in the slides with the new resolution. (720x480 is an output choice in Premiere Pro.)

From http://www.techsmith.com/learn/camtasia/5/indepth/saving-ppt-as-images.asp,

Pixels           Inches           Ratio
width   height   width   height   w/h
320     240      3.34    2.5      1.33
640     480      6.67    5        1.33
720     480      7.5     5        1.5
800     600      8.34    6.25     1.33
936     624      9.75    6.5      1.5
1008    672      10.5    7        1.5
1024    768      10.67   8        1.33
1080    720      11.25   7.5      1.5

Recording the voice over

Ask the Imager GA to borrow the Sony video camera "camcorder" (lives in a grey plastic box) and a cassette tape to record on.
Put camera in CAM mode to record. Start/stop recording by pressing red button.
Put camera in VCR mode to rewind/play recording. To hear the video, you must open the video screen and make sure the volume is turned up high enough.

It's easiest if you record script each paragraph at a time. Keep track of how many times you try each paragraph and which cut is good to use. It'll make it easier to make the cuts that go into the video.

Pause between the sections, so that it is easy to cut the audio later on. Hold the camera such that the microphone is directly pointing at you, talk into the microphone.

Creating the video (in Premiere Pro)

Use the shared Imager machine, caber, to create the video using Premiere Pro. There are tutorials online for using Premiere Pro.

Import the audio by connecting the video camera to the computer using the FireWire (IEEE 1394) cable (in the camcorder box) and choosing File -> Capture in Premiere Pro, a new window will pop up. Make sure tape is rewound to beginning. Uncheck "import video". Press Record button in Premiere Pro (not on camera!!), and then press Play button in Premiere Pro to capture. Press Record button again to stop when audio is done.

Cut audio segments (or video) segments, and place them (by dragging) on timeline to make movie. Avoid having empty areas in the audio track -- that creates noticeable quiet periods. Rather copy over "quiet" regions from your recording.

Import images/video into Premiere Pro using the Media Types tab to find files and drag them into box (on top left).

You can stack multiple layers of image/video. For example, by putting one image on the farthest layer, you can have a uniform background throughout the whole movie.

Title slides, text labels, arrows, drop shadows, etc. can all be made from within the software. Add them as image layers.

Add cross-fades between slides for smoother transitions.

All kinds of animation effects can be added to images/videos: fade-in/out, blend, move along a path, highlight. you can add key frame locations on the parameters timeline on the effects settings pane so that multiple animations are in sync.

Compressing video (with Quicktime Pro)

1. Make sure your main sequence is selected in the Project space (the Project space contains a list of sources). In the Timeline, make sure the render marker extends to the end of the video that you want to capture. It is the gray bar on the ruler. See the tutorials (linked above) for more details. You also might want to make sure the blue marker with the red line is set to the beginning of the video, but I'm not sure if this makes a difference.
2. Export uncompressed video from Adobe premiere.
   1. File > Export > Media. Type=Microsoft AVI, Video codec=none, aspect=square pixels, pick the right resolution. ii. Alternately, Type=Quicktime, codec=H.264 square pixels, audio codec=aac+32KHz. This setting produces a smaller than uncompressed video, but it can still be compressed more with qt pro.
3. Open uncompressed video with Quicktime Pro (the shared machine, caber, in Imager x660 has Quicktime Pro installed. If needed: The license key is saved in D:\QuickTimeKey.txt)
4. File > export
5. Select "movie to quicktime movie" from the drop down, click options
6. Settings for video:
   1. Select compression type H.264
   2. Uncheck frame reordering (otherwise it messes up frame order in some cases, said Gordon)
   3. Choose High (default) or Best quality if you are working on images
   4. Encoding multi-pass would take longer, but produce better quality
7. settings for audio:
   1. Format: AAC (Linear PCM is the default but doesn't compress and you will have a huge video even when you compress the video)
   2. Channels: Stereo
   3. Rate: whatever you used to export raw, 32kHz sounds ok most of the time for human voice
   4. Target bit rate controls compression, choose a number, 96kbps works fine

Uploading a video to youtube

You can use PSM google account: login info given here