OK, so I was somewhat put off from posting videos on the forum (specifically for the Monthly Challenges that are ongoing) because of my ineptitude at editing and posting videos. However, I now have a (very rudimentary!) understanding of how to go about it so I thought I'd share what I've found. Feel free to add your own hints and tips to this post if you think it might help others. What you will need: · A mobile ‘phone capable of shooting videos (plus its USB charging lead) · A PC · Some editing software (I use the free version of Lightworks but there are many available) · A YouTube account 1. Shoot your video using your mobile ‘phone. 2. Plug your USB charging cable in to your ‘phone and connect it to one of your PC’s USB ports. 3. Use File Explorer to copy the videos from your mobile to your chosen PC folder. 4. If you don’t already have some editing software, download your chosen program and install it. Lightworks, which is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac, can be found here: https://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_lwks&view=download&Itemid=206 5. Open Lightworks, select ‘Create a new project..’, and give your project a name. 6. You will be asked to select a framerate – to be honest, being a beginner, I always just select ‘Auto’. 7. Try not to be put off by the display – it is a fantastically powerful bit of software (some Hollywood films have been created using the Pro version) but can be used by us novices too! 8. Click on the ‘Local Files’ tab and use the ‘Places’ drop-down to navigate to the video(s) that you transferred from your mobile. Select the files that you want and click ‘Import’. 9. The imported files now appear on the Project tab. 10. Double-click a file to have it appear in the playback window. 11. Now select the ‘Edit’ tab. Again, double-click to add the chosen file to the playback window. 12. There is a vast amount that can now be done to your video, if you so wish, and certainly way too much for a simple guide like this. Play around with it, Google Lightworks and look at various tutorials, especially the ones on YouTube. 13. For illustration, I’ll run through some of things I’m doing for the ‘Four feet in a box’ forum challenge video – splice two, or more, videos together, re-orient ‘sideways’ videos, add titles/credits, add music. 14. Splicing: We shot two videos for this challenge so the first thing I want to do is splice them together. Add an ‘In’ point at the start of the video by pressing the first blue diamond icon below the playback window (you can hover the mouse pointer over the icons to get a description of the icon and double-check that you have the correct one). Now go to the end of the video (use the right-facing arrow with a vertical line following it) and select the second blue diamond to add an ‘Out’ point. Now click the icon with a double blue arrow, one pointing left and one right, to add the selected section to our project. Drag and drop the second video into the playback window and repeat the process. The whole project (at this stage just the two videos) now shows in the second playback window and also is different coloured sections in the bottom window. 15. Re-orient. You may find that videos from mobiles appear sideways on during playback. This can be changed within Lightworks. Go to the VFX (Video Effects) tab. Click on the ‘+’ icon in the top left corner to display a menu of effects. For future reference, note that you can select the star to the left of the effect narrative to add the effect to your list of favourites to speed-up the editing process for subsequent videos. Use the same ‘In’ and ‘Out’ selection procedure as outline above to select the area of the project to apply the effect to. Select the chosen effect (3D DVE in this case) and then press the ‘Apply Effect’ button at the bottom of the list. Within the sub-menu that now appears we can rotate the display 90 degrees – type 90 into the Z degrees box and then return. As well as the video now being the ‘right’ way up in the playback window you will see a DVE colour block has been added to the bottom window – this shows that the effect has been applied to the selected section. 16. Titles/credits. I found that the simplest way to do this was to pick a still (ie a photo) to import into the video and use Lightworks to add some chosen text to it and play it for a given amount of time. Go back to the ‘Log’ tab and the ‘Local files’ option again and repeat the import process for your chosen picture. However, before clicking ‘Import’ right-click on the chosen file and enter the duration for the still (Videos – Stills duration). After the import return to the ‘Edit’ tab. In the bottom window move the playback indicator (the vertical red line) to the start, assuming that is where you want the titles, double-click your imported picture to add it to the playback window, select the whole section and insert it into our sequence. Now go back to the VFX tab and select just the still/titles section ready for editing. Click on the ‘+’ again and this time we want the ‘Titles’ effect. Double-click this effect to go to the text addition section and add your desired text and format it. 17. Music. When adding music to your video make sure that it is either your own work or music that is royalty-free (eg https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music ). Otherwise you may find yourself receiving a claim for royalties from the recording artist! Import the clip, using the same procedure as for the videos, and then drag and drop the music into the timeline. 18. That’s pretty much it for a basic video. As long as you maintain back-ups you can’t really go wrong so experiment as much as you want to! 19. To produce a video that can be posted on YouTube go to the Edit tab and select Project Contents and then Everything. Right-click on the Sequence file and select the Export and YouTube – select your file destination and name and click OK. This may take a few minutes to complete. 20. Go to your YouTube account. Click on the Upload button (a vertical arrow in the top right corner of the page). On the page that opens navigate to your video and select it. Again, depending on the size of the video, this may take some minutes. After being ‘uploaded’ the video will then be ‘processed’ (for a few more minutes!). Click on Publish to finalise the process. Make a note of the YouTube page created for your video and post it on the forum. To post it you need to use the “Media” tag – so, a webpage address of "https:// youtu.be / rU6nfj1QggQ" becomes [bob=youtube]rU6nfj1QggQ[/bob]. (Substitute the word MEDIA for "bob"!)
Simples I just get my Son to video me on our camera, he edits and downloads it onto Youtube. Don't ask me how he does this, it's a complete mystery to me Thanks for the detailed information @UncleBob xx
Thank heaven I don't have a mobile phone, my poor little brain would never cope. I am very impressed with your knowledge @UncleBob
One day I 'might' get around to posting some of my go pro videos, is this the same process? Do I really need a YouTube account? Does that mean anyone can go on YouTube and find my videos? I used to be the person who could sort out computer issues, now I seem to have been left behind .
You need YouTube or similar (Flickr, Vimeo...). In YouTube, you can make your videos "public", meaning anyone can search for and find them, "unlisted", meaning they won't appear in any searches but you can share the link (on here for example), and "private", which means only you can see them.
