Understanding the Main Screen of a Digital Video-Editing Program: Part 1

Imagine a sports stadium with two lone competitors, facing each other behind two computers in the center arena. The stadium is filled with enthusiastic supporters of each competitor, urging their heroes on. The rabid crowd is now standing on their feet, trying to out-shout each other with their hero's names, "Avid!" "FCP!" "Avid!" "FCP!" Who will win, and who will be defeated? Time will only tell. Sound a little silly? Maybe.

Personally, I can care less which platform wins out. The reason being is that whatever ten to thirty thousand dollar editing system my employer invests in is what I will edit with. This is something to remember if you want an editing career in this industry. Look, just because you know everything there is to know about the latest version of FCP, and you think it is the greatest thing around, let me ask you this. What if you are hired by an employer with an Avid system, or better yet, an older Media 100 system? Are you going to tell them to get another machine? Their response will be, "find another job." This is what they invested thousands of dollars on, and they want to get every single cent they can out of their investment. Trust me, in the last eight years of various jobs I have worked with Avid on a PC and Mac, older versions of Premiere or Media 100, and FCP. One place is still using the Media 100.

Unless you actually own one of these high-priced, high-end systems, your loyalty is not going to make much of a difference anyway. If you do happen to own one of these machines, I doubt you are using it for weddings and sweet sixteen parties. Owning one of these systems means that you are most likely competing in the high-end market. You have also invested thousands of dollars more in cameras, lights, and other equipment. For those of us that do not have high paying clients breathing down our necks for finished product, or projects that are earning thousands of dollars, we neither have the money, or the need for that matter, for either of these systems.

As for the four hundred dollar editing program I use at home. It cost thousands of dollars less, but can basically do almost anything these high-end machines can, including video layering, proxy editing and HD. It suits my purposes anyhow. The truth is, when you stand Avid and FCP next to each other and compare them on-screen, they actually appear very similar. In fact, if you compare them with the hundreds of other editing packages out there, mostly all of their main editing screens look the same. At least the mid to high range ones do anyway. The only differences are nifty features, user-friendliness, performance, file formats and connections. But what you see onscreen while you are editing is basically the same in all of them. When we first began to edit video on computers, there were two choices in user functionality. One was a storyboard system, which is still available today on some programs as an added treat, most often for the beginner.

The storyboard system of dragging clips to a work panel at first seems easy, and appears to be very handy when editing video clips. The trouble begins when you start adding audio or other elements into the project. This requires you to enter time calculations when placing each audio clip into the project. You must calculate and type in when each audio clip is to start, for how long, and when it ends, because audio clips are usually placed at the beginning or end of a project. If you are working with numerous audio clips and sound effects, it really gets as complicated as it sounds, especially if you start making adjustments to the overall project. You can place audio clips anywhere you like, even before or after the selected video clips, but the project screen takes on a confused and unorganized look. There are tools to make things easier, but a storyboard system's main problem is the difficulty in visually picturing how all the clips fit together with one another.

The other user choice we had in those days is what we use today. It is a Timeline system, and they have come a long way from their humble 16-bit beginnings. Back then it was only a timeline and nothing else. As computers advanced in technology, additional features like onscreen monitors and other windows were added, making timelines more functional for the user. I do not care what editing software you use, all video editing timeline systems fundamentally look and work the same way. Once you understand the functionality of the basic components, you will be up and running in no time. Whatever editing software you are using, most of what I cover in this article can apply to almost all of them. So let's get started.

Let us look at the main screen. It appears a little confusing at first because it is divided up into different little windows. Don't worry, once you get the hang of it, it will not be that intimidating to use. Let us start with the timeline window. The timeline window is usually at the bottom, but most programs will allow you to move the different windows around to suit your tastes anyway. The actual timeline is in this window, which is a large horizontal rectangle. This is your main working area, where you will be inserting and editing clips. Somewhere on the top of the timeline window, there will be buttons to easily call up program features, but these buttons may be in a window of their own in some programs.

Inside the window is the actual timeline, and will probably have a file tab on the top of it. Once you give your project a name, the new name will appear on the tab. Get into the habit of keeping names short so you can read them easier on the tabs. Timelines have tabs because you can have several projects loaded into your timeline window, and tabs will make it easier getting from one project to another. The actual timeline is divided into horizontal columns (tracks) with time indicators on the top. Generally there are two video tracks on the top, and two audio tracks below. They may be named Video 1-2, and Audio 1-2. Programs usually allow you to add more, or the default settings will already provide additional tracks. There is usually a vertical scroll bar(s) on the right side to move around your project as it grows. Incidentally, inexpensive or free editing programs may only provide two video tracks, two audio tracks (one for 'voice' and one for 'music'), one 'title' track and nothing else, but this article is about more sophisticated software packages.

If you are new to all this, and do not understand the time displays, let me explain. There are normally four pairs of digits that editing software uses to indicate time. The first two digits are hours, then minutes, seconds and frames (00:00:00:00). In film, every second you see onscreen equals 24 image-frames (24 fps). In video there are 30 frames for every second (30 fps). Taking this a step further with video, each frame of a video clip is further divided into two other images known as fields. Put simply, these