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How do you edit Canon 5DII .MOV clips on a Mac or else under Windows?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Canon chose .MOV wrappings so it is harder to find a program to edit the movie clips. What do you use? I'm interested in levels, color balance and being able to crop and so forth, add/replace sound or still images and also join together different sequences.

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

We have been doing some video editing lately (thought we were going to do more, but that didn't happen yet). We settled in on the AVS Video Editor:

http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Editor.aspx

I had planned to post a full report on it, but something threw me off the track. I may do so when I get back to Dallas.

It affords both "storyboard" and "timeline" editing paradigms. There is great ease and flexibility in trimming clips and arranging them. The accompanying sound is automatically edited conformally by default, but there is opportunity to deal with the sound separately.

There are many opportunities to make image adjustments to the video. They can be applied directly or via something quite equivalent to the Photoshop "adjustment layer" paradigm.

The user interface is logical and easy to use but not "trivial" or "cute".

It will take in material in almost any imaginable video format.

One peculiarity is that, although indexing is in the hour:minute:second:frame form, "frame" always means 1/50 sec, regardless of the frame rate of the source material. There is no implied "working" frame rate (or perhaps it is 50 f/s); a frame rate for the delivered output is set in that context.

There is great flexibility in the parameters of the output, with presets for a number of "common" ones.

The product is distributed under an unusual pricing arrangement through "AVS4YOU". One buys either a one-year or "unlimited" subscription. One can then download and activate any of the company's catalog of products (there are other very interesting ones, such as an excellent sound editor) for that period of time - and the activations only last for that period as well. Thus to have permanent life for any (or all) of the products, one must buy the unlimited subscription. (That is currently $59.00.)

There is a fully-functional (I think) free trial provision.

You may want to give it a try. If you do, I'll be glad to give you some "getting started" hints.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Well, I have my breakfast in front of me (what one might call a "breakfast burrito") so I am prepared to proceed. (Carla is at a "function" - not to be confused with "functional" - breakfast).

The editing paradigm and interface of the AVS Video Editor are vary similar to other well-known editors in this genre, such as Ulead Video Studio and its successor by Corel.

Basic longitudinal editing is non-destructive. Suppose our task is to take a clip from the camera and just trim off starting and ending material not wanted in the finished movie. We "import" the file to a holding area, and then drag its icon onto the timeline.

We can then trim off the unwanted material in several ways. We can do it right on the timeline, "playing" the clip, or stepping forward and backward (1/50 sec at a time - not a frame), or we can move through the material with a play cursor. When we have the cursor positioned at the start of the desired material, we can "cut" the clip there (breaking it into two "scenes'). We then just delete the first "scene" (which has the unwanted preliminary material). The gap this leaves is of course automatically closed up.

We can also open a Trim window, where we can do this with greater finesse. We can play the material, forward or backward, at normal speed, or faster, or slower. We can of course step in "pseudo-frames", or move with a cursor. At the critical points, we call for a "Mark In" or "Mark Out" tag. When we exit the Trim window, only the material between Mark In and Mark Out will appear on the timeline.

However, if we later decide we should have left a little more of the "preamble", we can return to the Trim window. The entire source clip will be accessible. We can move the Mark In point to our new starting spot and exit.

AVS offers an obscene repertoire of transitions, used to move from one scene to the next with other than a "flash cut"

Suppose we have two scenes, A and B, adjacent. We wish to transition from A to B by way of, for example, a lateral wipe. (I know that's not a likely choice, but in fact the most likely transition involves some slight time complications, so I don't use it for the example.)

We open a panel with the repertoire of transitions shown as icons and drag the lateral wipe transition icon to our timeline, depositing it roughly at the boundary between the A and B scenes.

Any transition deposits initially with a duration of 2 seconds. A corollary in this example is that the start time of scene B is automatically advanced to 2 seconds before the end time of scene A. This overlap is what the "wipe" works on.

We can then change the duration of the transition, either by dragging directly on the timeline or numerically in a transition properties window. In either case, the starting time of the B scene is adjusted to fit.

If we wish, we can "lift" several scenes out of a single source clip in one operation, using a multiple-trim window. In effect, a Mark In-Mark Out pair is established for each such scene.

When we exit the window, the new scenes are initially adjacent in the time line, but can readily be moved by drag and drop or cut and paste to their desired locations in the movie.

Hopefully, this gives you some insight into the flavor of editing with the AVS Video Editor (and, generally, with several of its competitors, as well).

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Thanks for the helpful report. It seems to work like iMovie, referencing unaltered files. No Mac support! However it could be run, I guess under Parallels.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I discovered, that for the Mac, there are some excellent features in imovie. It appears that it can deal with Canon's .mov codec, but first one is advised to change the files to an intermediate codec with a free app called MPEG Streamclip. When the files are converted before imove gets them, the process nopw becomes straightforward, it seems.

There's a wonderful resource and turorial by Ken Stone here

The introduction is inviting and what follows is an excellent presentation with generous illustrations that make a must read.

"While I have written about both iDVD and iWeb, I never paid much attention to iMovie, after all, I work in FCP. Recently I went to the LAFCPUG meeting here in L.A., where Randy Ubillos, creator of Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro and Apple Aperture, showed off his latest creation, iMovie 09. Now there has always been an iMovie in the Apple iLife package, but several years ago, Randy created a completely new version called iMovie 08, now iMovie 09. So why am I writing about iMovie 09 if I work in FCP? The answer is simple. At the demonstration I saw a number of features in iMovie 09, that I wished were in FCP and I wondered if there was a way to use iMovie 09 in conjunction with FCP, utilizing some of its features to supplement the FCP workflow, most importantly in the rough cut phase of editing, as '09' has an amazing skimming/edit tool. iMovie also sports a new and modern tool for exact clip trimming, the Precision Editor, and it's stunning. And, iMovie provides full Real Time playback, no rendering required, ever.

After doing some testing, I found that the workflow required to use '09' with FCP is probably not worth the advantages gained by using the two apps together. However, I did discover that '09' is truly an amazing application, much more able and sophisticated than it would first appear. Automated video import process, browser organization, clip skimming and editing, text and animated titles, transitions, video effects, backgrounds, sound effects, audio control, voiceover, green screen, background music, speed control and direction, photo manipulation (Ken Burns effect), markers and chapter markers, color correction, waveforms, themes, animated maps, video stabilization, picture-in-picture, L-cuts, Precision Editor, full screen playback, the list goes on. iMovie is a full fledged editor, I think that you are going to be surprised at what it can do and how intuitive it is."


So this looks like a program worth trying. It's part of iLIFE 2010 but the imovie version is from 09. There's rumor of an iLIFE 2011 but for the price of $79, it is not so great a loss if it works for now without any more improvements.

Asher
 
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