Preproduction


Capturing


Basic Editing


Effects


Output


Terms & Tools

Stage 5: Output
What It Is | Tools | Example | Tips

What Output Is

Output is the stage where you finalize your movie into the form in which you wish to display it, for example, for the Web, for videotape, or for a presentation.

Note: As explained in Stage 1, output should be decided in preproduction.

Tools for Output

Movie Maker's "Export As..." command allows you to choose new formats, compression schemes, frame rates, audio sample rates, and more. To record the movie to a video tape, use the "Print to Video" command. Both of these commands are in the File menu.

Sound Track's "Export..." command also allows you to choose formats, compression schemes, and other parameters for output.

Adding a movie to a Web page is as simple as dragging and dropping it into WebMagic(tm).

To include a movie in a presentation, use Showcase.

Example: Kam's Output Story

  1. He chooses "Export As..." in Movie Maker and selects the Apple Compact Video (CinePak) compression scheme.

  2. He uses Movie Maker to export a couple of his movie title frames as images, then saves one as a GIF file (with ImgView), and drops into his Web page in WebMagic. This image represents the movie on the Web page.

  3. He selects the image of the movie title on his Web page in WebMagic, then drops the movie file icon on top of it to create the link. That's it!

Tips

  • One way to conserve the amount of disk space the audio takes up is to lower the sample rate and/or the sample width. To get the best quality-to-disk-space ratio, it is better to compromise sample rate than sample width.

  • Because of limited network bandwidth and disk space, movies displayed over the Web (as of this writing) are typically composed of parameters that approximate:
    • 160 x 120 frame dimension
    • 5 to 15 frames per second
    • Less than 5 megabytes file size and less than 2 minutes long, unless you are serving them to a high-bandwidth intranet of workstations, in which case you can get away with making them somewhat bigger.
    • QuickTime format with CinePak (Apple Compact Video) compression.

  • There is an all-purpose tool for converting and compressing movie, audio, and image files: Media Convert. Media Convert also enables you to resize or crop video, and to change a number of other audio and video parameters, such as flicker filter.
    
    

the end!


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