SCIENCE VIDEOS MADE SIMPLE
A short guide to making simple whiteboard-style videos for scientists
7. EDITING
This guide was created in early 2017 to guide a bunch of graduate students through the process of creating simple science videos for general audiences using whiteboards, stick figures, and video capture devices like smartphones (we used Apple iPods, which are no longer available, but the techniques still stand).
Since then the available technologies have improved – for instance, most smart phones will record good audio without the help of an external microphone, and recording apps have evolved. But the basic approaches and principles remain the same. For a more in-depth article on the underlying ideas and process, see here.
Editing brings together your video clips and voiceover to create a near-complete version of the final video. This is is followed (in the process we are covering in these modules) by final touches, where the last elements of the video are added (such as titles and soundtrack) and the video is polished up before being released.
While we’ve separated out editing and final touches here into two parts of the production process, they are often combined.
There are many different approaches to editing. The one we’ll use here draws on my personal workflow — it isn’t the only approach, but it is quite an efficient one.
In this approach, we fit the video clips to the voiceover by altering their speed and adding still frames.
How this is done will vary between different editing programs. I use Final Cut Pro and iMovie on a Mac, which both allow clip speed to be varied and still frames to be inserted with ease. Both should be possible in other programs.
I’ll be focusing on the process, not the specific mechanisms of how to do do it in different programs. That said, the iMovie/Mac combination is a clear winner here in terms of the ease with which videos can be edited. And the software’s free!
The bad news is that, if you are using a PC, the range of free/good video editors is limited. I’ve had workshop participants produce good videos using Movie Maker in Windows, but the program’s long in the tooth these days, and is clunky. Many video makers use Wondershare Filamora these days, but in workshops we have had uniformly bad experiences with the program, and would not recommend it!
Workflow
1. Import video clips to your computer
Import your video clips onto your computer, from your smartphone. How you do this will depend on whether you use a Mac or a PC (or something else).
For video clip import on a Mac from an iPhone, the easiest way to import clips is to connect the phone to your computer and use the Image Capture app on the Mac, or to use AirDrop. (This was true when originally written, but these days simply synching the Photo app works well!)
Video orientation: If you were using the pencil and paper method with your phone positioned horizontally above the table, you may find that the orientation of your video is incorrect — as in vertically oriented rather than horizontal (this is not a problem with whiteboard video).
This can be corrected after importing to your computer. However, a much easier solution is to correct the orientation before import.
2. Import your voiceover to your computer
Voiceover import/export will depend on which app you used to make the recording (see the voiceover notes). To import it to your computer, follow the instructions in the app.
3. Import the clips and the voiceover into your video editing program
How you do this will depend on the program you use.
4. Create a new video project
Different programs have different terms for video projects — but what you are doing here is the equivalent of opening a blank document in a word processor.
5. Add all of your clips to the new video timeline
Add the clips in the same sequence as the storyboard.
I either add all the clips and then remove/edit clips from the video timeline, or selectively add clips to the timeline — both work just as well as each other, but for this exercise, we’ll start with everything, then remove what we don’t want.
6. Speed up all the clips in the timeline by a factor of 10
The way you do this will vary from program to program — on the Mac, you need to select all clips in the timeline and set their speed to 1000%.
Note: in some programs you may need to render the video at this point for it to display properly.
At this point, you’ll also have to remove any audio that incidentally recorded along with the video (this is separate from the voiceover you recorded). Do this by selecting all clips and either setting the audio level to zero, or detaching the audio from all clips and deleting it.
7. Add the voiceover to the timeline
Once you’ve added the voiceover, and before doing anything else, tidy it up. There’s usually a bit of noise at the beginning and the end, so remove these by starting the track after the initial noise, and stopping it just after the narration finishes.
If you recorded the voiceover in one take, you can move on to the next step. If not, go along and remove what you don’t want (such as fluffed lines and additional takes), and add in any additional takes. You should end up with a smooth voiceover track that has no audible joins or glitches.
Once you are happy with the voiceover, position it so that it starts where you want it to in the video — this may be at the start of the first clip, or just before it.
8. Match the clips to the voiceover
Starting from the beginning of the voiceover, for each clip:
- Delete it if it is a duplicate take or not needed (keep the best take!);
- Trim the beginning and the end of the clip if necessary;
- Create a freeze frame at the end of the clip;
- Adjust the speed of the clip and the length of the freeze frame to match the voiceover;
- Go on to the next clip.
A freeze frame is where you convert a single frame in the video into an image. Using this combination of speeded up video and freeze frames, it’s easy to match the video to the voiceover.
Use your judgement to gauge how fast or slow to make the clip, and how long to make the freeze frame. This will depend a lot on the voiceover — I typically vary the speed of my clips between 5x and 20x speed, but always start with 10x speed.
Sometimes, it also makes sense to add freeze frames in the middle of a clip–use your creative judgement!
At this point, you should have a reasonable looking video, that is just missing a sound track, opening and closing credits, and some final finessing.
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