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Figure 12.1

The Avid Media Composer interface includes a project window, bins containing clips, source and record viewers, and a timeline.

Editing Tools

One of the best things about a good editing application is that there are many different ways to make an edit. The following is a list of editing tools found in most editing applications. If you are new to editing, selecting a package with lots of these features will ensure the most editing flexibility. If you have some experience editing, you’ll want to be sure to find a package that provides the editing controls that you prefer.

Drag-and-Drop Editing

With drag-and-drop editing, you use the mouse to drag shots into the timeline window from a bin. Once there, you can rearrange shots by dragging them into the order you prefer. Drag- and-drop editing is often the best way to build your first rough string-up of a scene. You can arrange and select multiple shots in a bin and then drag them into the timeline all at once.

Three-Point Editing

Three-point editing lets you define the part of a source clip that will be used in your edited sequence, by selecting a beginning, or in-point, and an ending, or out-point, within the clip (these are the first two points), and then selecting where the clip will begin or end in your

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edited sequence (the third point). This allows you to build an edited sequence more precisely than you can with drag-and-drop editing. After setting the inand out-points, press the Edit button and the selected part of your source clip will be placed on the timeline at the selected destination.

JKL Editing

If your program provides JKL editing controls, the J on your keyboard will play your video in reverse, the K will pause, and the L will play forward. This simple mechanism allows you to shuttle quickly around a video clip to find an inor out-point. Since you can usually select an in-point with the I on your keyboard and an out-point with the O, JKL turns your standard keyboard into an efficient, one-handed edit controller (see Figure 12.2).

Insert and Overwrite Editing

Whether you’re using drag-and-drop, three-point editing, or switching between the two, your editing package should provide for insert and overwrite editing modes. These two options allow you to choose how your footage is added into an already-cut sequence.

When inserting, all of the footage after the in-point is pushed down the timeline to accommodate the footage that is being added. In other words, the new footage—whether audio, video, or both—is inserted into the timeline.

Conversely, overwrite leaves all clips in place, but writes the new clip over any existing video or audio (depending on which tracks are targeted), as shown in Figure 12.3.

Figure 12.2

Keyboard, or JKL, editing provides a simple, one-handed editing interface.

Figure 12.3

Insert edits allow you to add a shot between two existing shots (left), while overwrite edits allow you to easily add a shot to cover an edit, like a cutaway (right).

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Trimming

Once you have a decent rough cut of a scene, it’s time to fine-tune it. For example, you might want to add beats of silence between certain lines of dialogue to show a character’s hesitation, or you might want to extend a shot of a character to show his reaction as another character speaks. One way to do this is by trimming the edit. A trimming interface has a familiar twoviewer window, but instead of source and record viewers, you see the last frame of the outgoing shot in the left viewer and the first frame of the incoming shot of the edit that you are going to trim in the right (see Figure 12.4). In trim mode, you can extend or shorten the end of the outgoing shot (the “A-side” of the edit), or you can extend or shorten the incoming shot (the “B-side” of the edit), or both.

Figure 12.4

The trimming interface in

Apple Final Cut Pro.

Ripple and Roll, Slip and Slide

There are a number of different types of edits that you can make once you’ve built a sequence. The following are four advanced ways to fine-tune an edited sequence. Depending on your software, they can be executed in the timeline, in trim mode, or both.

Ripple and roll are two ways to change an existing edit between two shots. Ripple allows you to extend or shorten either the outgoing shot (the A-side) or the incoming shot (the B-side). All of the shots in your sequence will move farther down in the timeline to accommodate these added frames. Roll lets you extend the outgoing shot and tighten the incoming shot simultaneously (or vice versa). The overall length of the sequence will remain unchanged, which makes rolling edits well suited to creating overlapping edits.

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Figure 12.5

By using a slide edit, you can move the center shot in the top sequence to the right (middle) or to the left (bottom) without changing the length of the overall sequence.

Slip-and-slide edits involve three shots, as in Figure 12.5 (top). If you use a slide edit to drag the middle shot forward in time, the first shot automatically will be extended to fill the gap, while the last shot will be shortened automatically to keep the overall length of the three shots the same (see Figures 12.5 [center] and 12.5 [bottom]). Slip allows you to change the footage contained in the middle shot, starting it at a different place without affecting the shots surrounding it or the duration of the sequence.

Multi-Camera Editing

If your software allows for multi-camera editing, you can group shots from different cameras together in your timeline and then select which video you want to see at any given time. You can group the audio and video for each shot using either matching timecode or a slate sync mark. Figure 12.6 shows multi-camera editing in Avid Media Composer.