EDLD+5363+Video+Editing+Evaluation+&+Podcast+Tutorial

This week’s assignment was to use and evaluate two pieces of open source, video editing software. This had me nervous from the beginning. I do not have any experience editing video except for some minor adjustments made in Windows Movie Maker and even more minor edits made within iMovie. My initial thought was to choose one of these two programs to evaluate, but then I thought that I should challenge myself and find something that I was not familiar or comfortable with. Mission accomplished! I chose to evaluate Virtual Dub version 1.8.8 and the YouTube Video Editor. These two programs are as different as night and day! “Understanding that movies and television are built, one step at a time enables students to imagine their own pieces. “ (Garrison, 1999) This quote came to mind when I was trying to learn these editing programs. Movie making, even in its most basic form is not a point, shoot and go type of endeavor. A lot of planning and editing is involved to make the filmmaker’s vision come to life. Having a good editor is key to the success of the project. ** Virtual Dub ** I was completely lost when I tried to use this program. It was way over my head. When I read some of the user comments on the internet, most of them said it was a very easy program to use with many popular features. I am assuming that they meant easy if you are familiar with video editing and all of the jargon that goes along with it. From poking around and clicking on buttons, I did learn a few things, but not enough to feel that I could edit a video successfully. One thing that I did notice is that Virtual Dub does support all of the popular PC file formats and extensions like: .avi .divx .mpg .mpeg .mpv .miv .dat .anim .flm .gif .png .tga .jpg .jpeg .iff .avs .vdr It does not; however, support QuickTime and MPEG2 files which may steer some folks away from using Virtual Dub. When I was trying to determine which programs to evaluate, I ran across one called VideoSpin. It looked great, but the download size was absolutely horrendous. I say that to say this…Virtual Dub was only 1.4 MB to download, so that is a positive. There were many filters that could be applied and transitions/effects which gives you more options for creativity. According to the help file, it can convert and compress video and audio, edit, capture, render and filter video files. I was able to successfully cut a portion of the movie and add a blur filter. To be honest, it looked horrible when I finished, but I did it. It appears to be a robust program that would serve the needs of non-professional editors who know a bit more than the complete novice. I would not recommend this for elementary and possibly not even middle school because the learning curve would be steep and the lack of a good user interface would also contribute to student (and teacher) frustration.
 * Video Editing Software – An Evaluation and Reflection **

** YouTube Video Editor ** This is the epitome of basic editing. You can cut and arrange scenes in your video and add a soundtrack. That’s about it. It is very simplistic, but it works. I can see using this for basic elementary and middle school projects that do not need a lot of sophisticated editing like layers, special effects and transitions. It was easy for me to use and was very fast in its rendering. Students (and adults) can pick this up in a matter of minutes (even seconds) and have a finished product in a short turnaround time. The only thing about this editor is that you can only edit videos that you have uploaded to YouTube. If a school has YouTube blocked, then this would not be a viable option for them. Also, if the school did have access to YouTube, the teacher would have to be very hands on and vigilant to ensure that the students are on task and looking at the appropriate videos. I read that more features will be coming soon, but in the meantime, it will do the trick!

// Garrison, Andres (1999, Winter). Video basics and production projects for the classroom. Center for Media Literacy. Retrieved April 6, 2009, from [] // media type="youtube" key="5CRTYucxwlU?fs=1" height="385" width="480"