Multimedia+and+Video+Technology

=**EDLD 5363 Multimedia and Video Technology**=

I was very excited about taking this course for the reason that this is the type of work I love to do. I could spend hours playing in Photoshop and editing. I teach Desktop Publishing so this is the type of work that is near and dear to my heart. Before teaching I worked for a video editing company. I worked with still graphics that were to be imported into video. I learned many things in that position. This week our assignment was to create a personal digital story using digital photos and editing software. I enjoyed the assignment from the beginning to the end. My story was difficult but therapeutic. I enjoyed going through the pictures finding just the ones that I had in my mind for the script. I have never thought of myself as a writer, however I found writing for the video enjoyable. The most difficult task was trying to stay within the small time frame of two to three minutes. As you can see I did not meet that challenge. I spent hours tweaking and cutting from the story to make it short enough for the assignment. Then I got to a point where I thought I could do no more for fear of losing impact. I must admit it is with great trepidation that I post something so intimate and personal on the internet. I spent days trying to come up with something else but this story continued to flood my mind. So here it is posted. The making of the video has been a pleasurable experience and I am looking forward to working with my group in producing a PSA.

**Personal Digital Story**
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=Evaluating Video Editing Software= After reviewing both Premiere Elements and Windows Live Movie Maker, and using a fee video clip to experiment using the programs, I chose to use Premier to edit the video clip. I really thought I would choose Movie Maker because it is a very basic program for novice users. I believed it would be easier to use even though I am familiar with Adobe products. (I have used Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, previously PageMaker, since the early 90s.) I found the opposite to be true for me. I suppose because I am familiar with Adobe's interface it made it easier, although I still found it a challenge to figure out. I watched YouTube tutorials on both. The Adobe Premiere Elements tutorial video and Microsoft Live Movie Maker tutorial on YouTube were both excellent videos for getting started with the basic features. The main feature I found that made me lean towards Premiere Elements was the fact that it was more versatile. In my title frame I wanted to change the color of only part of the text. In Movie Maker it changed the entire text on that frame. I also wanted part of the text larger. When I selected only the part I wanted to increase in size it changed all of the text. It gave me little control over text attributes - that would not do at all! Also, I could not get Movie Maker to show the separate clips of my video; it appeared that the entire video segment was one clip. When I imported the video into Premiere the timeline showed where the clips ended and another began in order to edit for special effects and transitions. “When you’re trimming frames from a clip, the monitor window displays both the clip that you’re editing and the clip directly before or after. This allows you to more easily create frame-accurate edits and see exactly how two clips will look together.” The last big difference between the two are the number of formats the software was capable of exporting. Premiere is able to export in a number of file formats – Adobe Flash, MPEG, AVI WMV, QuickTime, Image files and Audio files. However, Movie Maker only allowed the choice of WMV (Windows Media Video). Both also allowed to share online directly to YouTube, whereas only Movie Maker allowed you to also share on Facebook. Premiere was the right choice for me to be able to have more control and ease of use as well as a professional package that would enable me to do more complex editing. If I were to choose for using in the classroom it would have to be Movie Maker as this is what is loaded on our computers in my district. //Resource:// Siegchrist, G. (n.d.). Video editing software review – adobe premiere elements 3.0. //About.com Guide//. Retrieved from []

=Adobe Premiere Elements Tutorial= = = = = = = media type="custom" key="6851795"

=Reflection on PSA Post-Production=

Melba Morales was very instrumental in getting our group together during the first week of this course. She and I worked closely together during the first two weeks helping each other on our projects. We shared our scripts for the purpose of getting constructive feedback. Salvador Huerta and Lawrence Anderson joined the group quickly and by the end of Week 2 we were already brainstorming ideas for our PSA on the Google Site that Salvador had created. He posted the template for the project proposal and the shot list and we all began filling in information. We also used Google docs to place files for each other to have access.

I am a planner by nature, so I took it upon myself to initiated Skype meetings, initially to get to know each other on a more personal basis, then to have contact once a week much like our web conferences. W also communicated by email and if needed met up again on Skype during midweek. I feel each team member worked hard to equally share in the work load. Salvador did the video capture and some still shots, I initiated communication, provide still photography, and recorded voice over with Melba. Melba and I used Audacity and sent the files to Lawrence who put it all together using the video editing software on his Mac. Credits and reference citations along with the Creative Commons link were placed at the end of the video. Lawrence then output the PSA to a .mov file. He expressed that it was a bit of a challenge uploading to YouTube. We are pleased with the video, but given more time I think we could refine it even more by deleting one section of the voice over and syncing the voice over more accurately with the clips.

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This work is licensed under a [|Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License].