Which of These Programs is a Great Digital Film Editing Tool?

If you have read my previous article on Windows Movie Maker, then you should know that I would like to continue my series of articles on digital video editing programs. I recently did a project with my students that involved Flip Cams and creating short films. During that process, I have examined a lot of ways that either my students could easily edit their own footage or what I could use in order to easily display my student work over the internet.

Due to the fact that the format that the Flip Cam records on is MP4, you are instantly confined with choices on what to use. I found out that I could not use Windows Movie Maker, but there was an option to digitally convert the footage with a third party program, but I figured that I would be way too difficult with all of the students to manage. The Flip Cam comes with software installed on the device, and once you plug it into your computer, you have the option to edit film with Flip Share.

Once I started to read into the Flip Share software, I saw the limitations. If your students are going to make a film that does NOT require a lot of cuts and organization of clips, then stick with Flip Share. It is difficult to just make copies of selected segments of uploaded Flip Clips, so if you want to search for something within the first thirty seconds of clip "A" and then move it to the end of the film, you will probably find yourself pulling out your hair. This is why I don't really consider Flip Share a video editor, but more like a simple little snap shot out of everyday life or a family memory.

The support for the Flip Share also recommends that I could use something like Quicktime Pro to convert and edit the films on there. I spent about thirty dollars to get this little program, but I was again disappointed with the program's user interface. I felt that a true editing program would give me the option to slide my film clips back and forth on a A/B roll, but even though their guide talked about it, I could never find it or utilize it. I would copy segments of a clip, and then have to paste them end to end to get the best segments of all of my raw film data. This process was very tedious, and by the end, I just gave up trying to figure out the layout to easily edit the footage and looked for greener pastures.

Finally, I ended up settling for the online website of Jay Cut. What is great about Jay Cut is that the students would be able to edit their films from any computer with an internet connection. But some of the down sides would be that every time you have to edit a clip, it needs to be rendered and re-streamed over the internet. So the accessibility is a plus, but you pay for it by long rendering time and constantly seeing the site's slogan, "patience is a virtue," every time you want to see your newest footage.

Jay Cut also allows the users to easily upload music, pictures and video clips to their site and they accept a variety of file formats. What my students did was at first uploaded all of their film footage to Drop Box, for its online storage capabilities. But then for the students to download their footage from their Drop Box account, to that computer that they were working on, and then have to upload that clip to the Jay Cut site was quite difficult for the majority of my eight grade students to get used to. A majority of the students would sometimes delete the wrong clip from their library, as the groups of four students would each share the same username/password so that they each had access to the clips on the one account.

But what I found out the hard way was that to make sure the students each save a version of their film as their own version of a project. So, some students would make a copy of their work, and then properly save it, only for someone else to save that version of the film but deletes the wrong footage. This was very frustrating. Where a good chunk of my students started to quit this project from the same amount of frustration that I was feeling, we did come out with some nice products.

On top of being able to access their film clips from any computer with an internet connection, they had some other great little editing options for special effects on their film. They could adjust the speed of a clip, draw directly on a scene (to create a mock form of rotoscoping), but probably the coolest thing would be the green screen effects that can be created with the color replacement tool. When the students are finished with their film, they can then export it to their computer, a mobile device, upload directly to You Tube or embed it into their favorite web site. My students embedded their films into our class' Edmodo wall so that they could be shared, but I also downloaded the files off of You Tube so that they could be played in Itunes for the whole school.

Well, that is my little geek out session on Jay Cut. A great site to use, that is entirely free, and something that could be used as a great tool for your students to use when they create their digital editing project. This program is indeed an excellent digital storytelling tool and a clear cut video editor, which gave me that familiar A/B film roll and other filming techniques. It may have the occasional glitch on the site, and if you do, I would recommend that you just save your project, return to your Jay Cut home page and then back to editing and it will be just fine. Another great source you may want to look into with conjunction with this would be the website of Animoto. You can upload pictures and video and Animoto does all of the work of turning it into a movie. And if you have film clips, you can just tell which part of the clip that you want to be featured in the Animoto. It takes away a lot of the pain, love and diligence that goes into film editing, but the final product is quite amazing.

References:

http://www.theflip.com/en-us/Products/flipshare.aspx

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/extending/

www.jaycut.com

www.dropbox.com

www.animoto.com