Video Primer - part 2

When it comes to editing video there are some basic terms that can be helpful to understand. If I were to tell you to insert a wipe between two clips, that might not make much sense, but it's a perfectly natural thing to say in video editing parlance.

Clip: A short segment of video. When you import a video into your editing software it will be divided into clips of a few seconds long so that you can move things around and edit things as necessary.

Split: If you have a clip that's too long you want to split it into multiple clips. You might take a clip that's two seconds long and split it into two clips of one second apiece.

Wipe: This is the video equivalent of a transition effect in PowerPoint. A wipe moves you from one clip to the next using some visual effect. Think of the transition from the scene of the star destroyer in space to the desert of Tatooine in Star Wars, that's a wipe effect. Other transition effects might be more subtle than a wipe.

Fade: A cross-fade will reduce the previous clip while fading in the new clip so that, for just a moment, you see both clips over each other. You can also cross-blur where the old blurs out and the new blurs in. You can fade through black or white. Fades are good, subtle transitions between clips.

Render: When you've piled on all the edits that you want in your video it's time to render. That means that you have the computer putt everything together. You might think this step is simple since you can watch a preview of your editing right in the software, but it's a low-quality preview. Rendering the full video can take quite a while, especially with a high-quality video. You might have your computer rendering for hours before you get a final video.

What other video editing terms are important to know?

Video Primer - part 1

There's a lot of specialized terminology associated with digital video. Even knowing what's going on in the DV (digital video) world requires navigating acronyms aplenty. Here's a quick run-down of some of the more common terms you'll need to know.

Codec: the algorithm used to code and decode video files in a compressed format. A codec figures out what information can be dropped out from each frame of a video in order to make it smaller. The more aggressive the codec the lower the video quality, but the smaller the file. Some codecs are: DivX, Xvid, MPEG4 and H.264.

File Type: This is the indicator for what type of program should be used to open a video file. This is different than a codec. An Xvid encoded video can be in the AVI file type or WMV or even MOV. Not every codec is compatible with every file type, but each file type can support different codecs.

Media Player: This is the program that reads the file type and decodes the codec to play the video. So Quicktime is Apple's video player. It reads MOV files and decodes them for play on your computer. You can't play a WMV file in Quicktime since that's the Windows Media Video file type and it plays in Windows Media Player, though both the WMV and MOV file might use the same codec. Typically AVI files are the most compatible across different media players.  One media player that can address nearly every file type and codec is the VideoLAN VLC player. It's what I use.