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Lesson 2


Editing Your Story


Once you import your source clips into the Library window, you're ready to review the clips in the Cutting Room, then put them in order in the Story window.

Review clips

The key to effective editing is to select only the most engaging and interesting portions of your clips to place in your story. Unless you're aiming for an avant-garde effect, there's no sense in including long stretches of tedious or repetitive scenes.

TIP! Use the beat bars in the Story window (the four-second alternating bands of color directly beneath the timeline) as a guide to measuring individual clip length and as a reminder to keep clips shorter rather than longer. three to five seconds is ideal.

When you view a clip in the Clip Player, you can play it, "scrub" through it, and mark Start and End Cuts to select just a portion of the entire clip.


To view clips in the Clip Player:

Now it's time to play the clip through in its entirety, probably a few times, so you can get a feeling for which part of the clip you want to include in the story.


To play the clip:
  1. Click the Play Clip Selection button beneath the Clip Player. You can also press C.
  2. Take a few moments to experiment with playing the clip by using the Play Clip Selection button or pressing the C key.
  3. To stop the clip from playing, click the Play Clip Selection button again or press C or Escape.

Scrub clips

"Scrubbing" is a way to view a clip interactively. When you scrub through a clip, you drag the Clip Time marker to control the clip's speed and motion. This gives you more control than when IntroDV plays the clip for you in real time.


To scrub through the clip:

Note how you can quickly move through uninteresting parts and linger over the parts you're interested in.

Set start and end cuts

Start and End Cuts are begin and end points you set in a clip. In most cases, you probably won't want to use an entire clip in your story; you'll probably have footage that you don't want to include. Setting Start and End Cuts lets you take the most interesting sections of the clip and use them in your story.

For example, the eyes.mov clip shows Rex sitting on a bed. If you look at the clip duration, you'll see that the clip is about 15 seconds long. That's much too long for the opening shot, so you'll cut the length of the clip by adjusting the Start and End Cuts to use about four seconds of the clip. When you add the clip into your story, it will begin and end at these new points.

TIP! The timecode numbers in the Duration field--00:00:15;23--correspond to hours:minutes:seconds;frames.


To adjust Start and End Cuts:
  1. Still working with the eyes.mov clip, drag the Start Cut marker to the right just a small amount, until the clip duration changes from 15:06 to 14:05.

    Notice that dragging the Start Cut scrubs through the clip, and that at the 14:05 mark, Rex has dropped his nose slightly. At this point, moving the Start Cut has shortened the clip from 15:06 seconds to 14:05 seconds.

  2. Now drag the End Cut marker towards the left until the timecode shows 4:05. (In the clip, Rex drops his head a bit.)

    This will be the new End Cut, the point in the story where this clip will end.

Now you should have a 4:05 second clip of Rex, which you'll use as the opening sequence in your story. In the next set of tasks, you'll add the clip to your story in in the Story window.

Add clips to the story

At this point in the tutorial, you have a set of clips in the Library window, you've selected a clip and viewed it in the Cutting Room window, and you've cut the clip down to just the portion you want by setting Start and End Cuts. Now it's time to add that clip into the story.

Add a clip to the story

The timeline in the Story window is what its name implies: a linear playlist of all the clips you want to use in your story. The timeline shows you every second of your story, from start to finish. Next, you'll move (or "flow") that opening sequence of Rex into the story.


To move a clip from the Clip Player to the Story window:
  1. Make sure that the clip of Rex, with the Start and End Cuts you set previously, still appears in the Clip Player.
  2. Click the Add Clip button that appears between the Clip Player and the Story Player in the Cutting Room window.
  3. The first frame of the clip appears in the Story Player and a bar with the clip's name appears in the Story window.

Play and scrub the story in the Story Player

Playing and scrubbing a story in the Story Player is similar to playing a clip in the Clip Player.


To play the story in the Story Player:

To scrub the story:

Add more clips to your story

At this point, you've edited a clip in the Clip Player and moved it into the Story window as the opening sequence of your story. Now you'll edit and add more clips to complete your story. The clips show Rex walking out of the house, playing with a toy hedgehog, and then looking heroically into the camera (the big close-up finish!).

Using the skills you've learned, set Start and End Cuts for the clips remaining in the Library window. Each clip should be about four to five seconds long. When you're done, add the edited clips to the timeline, using the following table as a guide.

Clip Suggested portion to use Clip durations Place in story
walking out red door.mov Rex appears in doorway and walks onto patio Original duration: 6:23 Move Start Cut to: 4:22 Move End Cut to: 4:00 Edited duration: 4:00 After eyes.move clip
with hedgehog.mov Far shot of Rex playing with toy hedgehog Original duration: 9:17 Move Start Cut to: 9:00 Move End Cut to: 5:27 Edited duration: 5:27 After walking out red door.mov clip
hedgehog 2.mov Near shot of Rex playing with toy hedgehog Original duration: 9:18 Move Start Cut to: 8:22 Move End Cut to: 4:08 Edited duration: 4:08 After with hedgehog.mov clip
close up outside.mov Close-up of Rex's face Original duration: 14:06 Move Start Cut to: 14:06 Move End Cut to: 5:07 Edited duration: 5:07 After hedgehog 2.mov clip

You should end up with a story that is a little over 23 seconds long. If you like, take a few moments to play or scrub through the entire story.


Now you're ready to refine your story by adding effects. First, save your project, then proceed to the next lesson to learn about adding transitions to your story.


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support@digitalorigin.com
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