Every time I take one of these courses, I learn something new. Although I have used Premiere Pro quite a bit over the last several months, I still have much to learn.

I learned a number of things I can use to make more precise edits, down to the frame. Instead of dragging the end of a clip, now I can place the playhead exactly where I want it and reach for the razor tool to make that precise cut. Ripple Delete is fantastic!

I enjoy editing videos to music to improve their pacing and interest. For the types of videos I do, however, "shot-reverse shot" and "cutting on action" are not as useful. It is good to know about the techniques, in case I need to use them in the future.

I spent the most time in this class learning about things outside its scope, including Character Animator and After Effects. It was time well spent, since I will use those tools often in the videos I create in the future.

30 seconds? I don't think so... I'm pretty good at meeting the time limitations on these assignments, but this is something I will actually use. I like to try to keep instructional videos under three minutes,. This one comes in at just over a minute, incluing about 10 seconds of titles. I'm OK with that.

I actually bought a new computer to do this work. When I tried to open After Effects on my old Core i3, 4GB RAM laptop, it just kind of laughed at me. A sale at Best Buy and effecient UPS delivery, and the next day I have a new Core i7 16GB RAM 2-in-1. Now, I had been thinking about getting something like that for a while; this was the final impetus to do so.

I did the opening Ask Your Professor graphic in After Effects. I saved that out as an MP4, which I could bring into Premiere. The How To: title I did in Premiere. For the instructional part, I did the screen cast with Screencast-o-matic, which I use a lot. I did some editing in Premiere, then exported the resulting audio to Audition. I created the character in Illustrator, and then animated it in Character Animator, using the exported audio track from the screen cast for the lip synch. Once that was done, I exported it as a PNG sequence, so I could overlay it on the screencast video.. Pulled everything into Premiere, adjusted the size of the overlay, did some zooming in effects, created the Premiere Titles (still getting used to Essential Graphics...) added some free music at the beginning and end, set up some tansitions, and I not only have a video I can use right now, but I have a puppet and title sequence I can use in other videos.

I don't edit a lot of video wiyh people in it. Planets, yes - people, no. I'm not sure I really understand the whole "cutting on action" concept, but it isn't really something I will use a lot. I fell back on an old stand-by for pacing, music. I can use music to set the pace for a video, and I think it works to tell a story. Oh, and my video is 22 seconds long to include credits for the music...

For a variety of reasons (it's semester break and no one is around, I live alone, and my cats wouldn't cooperate), videoing two people telling a knock-knock joke wasn't working out for me. Also, the work I do in Premiere does not involve working with my original video. I tend to reuse Creative Commons or public domain video; I might record myself from my webcam or phone, but no one else. So, I decided to learn Character Animator.

Rather than clutter up this Learning Journal with a description of my learning Character Animator, I decided to create a new Learning Journal...for anyone who wants to avoid my many mistakes.

To create the video, I recorded the script in Audition. Then I created three videos, one for the front view, one for the acing Pluto view and one for the Facing Uranus view. I used the recording from Audition as the audio in Character Animator, using the +ip synch form audio file0 option. Each video had the entire audio file.

After I created the video in Character Animator, I exported it to .MP4 format and imported it into Premiere. In Premiere, I selected my "cuts" to put the video together. The multi-camera view would have been useful here, but I hadn't learned about it yet! I used the pitch shifter effect to change my voice for each character. I also zoomed in on the close up of the punchline and the reaction. I was able to trim it to exactly 30 seconds, since I had padded each "take" just a bit. Once I had my video, it took me maybe a half hour's worth of work in Premiere to get the final product.

If I had more time, there are some things I would change. Some of the cuts are too short, but to change that now would mean redoing the animation to get the reaction shot as the other character is talking. Some of the hand positions are off, too. But all in all, not bad for my first attempt at Character Animator! I'm confident I can do what I want to do with it in my online classes.

Create video montage sequence based on found video content that follows a theme of your choice. Like assignment 1 this project should show an escalation of intensity. This escalation can be through shot type, shot length, subject matter, movement, sound or some combination of these elements. 20 seconds exactly.

Spring is my favorite time of year. I love coming home each day to see what has bloomed in my garden. Unfortunately, spring is a little late this year, so I have not had a chance to take videos of it for the advanced project, but I might before too long.

Choosing music was easy; I just had to make sure I found a Creative Commons licensed version of Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which I found at Free Music Archive. Naturally, I chose the very familiar Spring Allegro movement. The 20 second time limit was a bit constraining, but I was able to cut it at a natural break at just over 20 seconds; then I kicked the speed up about 2% to get it right at 20 seconds. It isn't the best place to end, but with the fade at the end, it isn't bad. Without the time constraint, I probably would have tried to match the narration to the music more.

I have a recording where Patrick Stewart reads the accompanying sonnets for each movement. Of course, I couldn't use that, but I could read one myself. I found the text on Wikisource, and I narrated it in Audition. By taking extra long pauses at natural breaks in the reading, I was able to edit it down to about 19 seconds (I wanted it less than 20 so I could pause at the beginning and fade out at the end). Once I had the narration, I knew I had to knock the volume down on the music quite a bit.

Once I had the music and narration set, I could look for videos. I found them all on Pexels. I wanted to include sound effects, so I wanted videos with sound. The birds and the brook were pretty easy, but I was surprised how hard it was to find a thunderstorm! I had to take the audio from one and combine it with the video from another, and duplicate the footage to have enough. I knocked the volume down on the sound effects audio to be just the barest hint of sound. I cut the videos to the narration instead of the music.

The initial image is from a photo of lavender from my garden. I applied some sort of app effect on it on my phone, saved it to the Creative Cloud, and opened it in Illustrator. Then I cropped it to the right dimensions, and added the title with the drop shadow.

Once I had all the videos and audio, it was time to add transitions. I tend to use the dissolve video transitions a lot. This starts with a dip to white and ends with a dip to black. The transition from the graphic to the first video is a cross zoom; eveything else is a cross dissolve. I used an exponential fade on the end of both audio tracks, and I used the constant power to go from one sound to the next.

What did I learn this week? Keyboard shortcuts for inpoint and outpoint! I can't tell you the number of times I have very precisely picked my point, and then used the mouse to set the in or outpoint...and I accidentally click jump to in or out. Keyboard shortcuts are going to prevent that.

I also never knew I could bring just the audio or the video. I would always bring both, and delete what I didn't want. Inevitably I would end up dragging audio onto a track that already had audio, and would have to ctrl-Z it out and try again. Now I can just pick which I want. That was quite handy for this project, where I did not want the video track for the thunder, and I needed extra audio for the first birds clip (I could snatch it from the last video). That is two big time savers I will use quite a bit.

I think ripple edit will be useful, but I may need to think harder to remember to use that. Then again, I've already started using ripple delete. Slip tool I'm not sure about; I like knowing what it does, but that's not how my mind works in what I do. Although it would help with those pesky transitions where you get the cut right, but then it adds too many extra frames. Either way, it's nice to know what those tools are actually for1

Here is my ode to spring...

The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) by John Harrison with the Wichita State University Chamber Players is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Create a short montage video sequence using still images based on a single colour. Try and make the exported video 15 seconds exactly.

This is where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When I would edit video and try to adjust the timing, I couldn't figure out why it would jump from the last number being 23 or 29 or whatever to the next whole number. Being a science and math person, my schema for numbers is decimals...not FRAMES. Thank you, Kev, for explaining that - my world makes sense again.

The other little trick I liked was placing the playhead precisely and then cutting the image. I used the razor blade thingie on audio before, but I never thought about using it on an image or video clip. I would always drag the handles, which got me close to where I wanted, but not precesly enough for my slight mathematical OCD... Now I can do the math, move the head, and snap right to where it needs to be.

Finally, I have always had the problem of wanting a 1920 X 1080 video, but then dragging in a video clip that was smaller first, which would screw everything up. Never knew about creating a sequence first and then adding the video. Now I can set the size and adjust my videos to fit.

One more thing...if you updated your Premiere Pro to the latest version, the titles work completely differently now. Matthijs posted a great video in the Adobe Generation Professional showing how title works now (Essential Graphics). I created a title in Illustrator so I could have the gradiant, and saved it with a transparent background to overlay on the Horsehead Nebula.

Speaking of the Horsehead Nebula, it is one of my favorite space photos. I thought it would make a good basis for a color scheme.

Playing around in Week 01

Fun with Sound

Incompetech provides royalty-free music that you can also license under a Creative Commons license, which allows you to use it for free with proper attribution. I put the attribution in the credits for anything I do for the classes I teach, as well as attribution to NASA for images and videos, even though those are generally in the public domain.

I noticed a lot of people started adding music to their videos, so I decided to add some to mine. I found a tune I liked with a strong downbeat, and I timed the picture changes to happen on the beat of the music - 4 beats for the first 2, 2 beats for the next 4, and 1 beat for the next 4, and 6 beats for the last image, with the title coming in on the last 4 beats.

Music Credits: "Chill Wave" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I decided I wanted to increase the volume of the music to try to increase intensity, too. I used key frames to increase the sound volume over 4 beats followed by a plateau for 4 beats, and a fade at the end, since I had to cut the music at an odd part to make it 15 damn seconds long. Since I broke that many rules on the assignment, I decided to add in a few video effects, dip to white at the beginning, dip to black at the end, and a guassian blur on the last image that ends when the title fades in.

Music Credits: "Chill Wave" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The I decided to see if I could "change the mood" of the piece by changing the music. I looked for songs with exactly the same number of beats per minute (100) as the original, but with a different feel to them. This one is a little more bouncy and upbeat than the original funky music.

"Fretless" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

That was interesting, but let's see if I can get a more dramatic change. Again, same number of beats per minute, same picture sequence and timing, and same changes to the volume of th emusic throughout as the original. Only difference is the song.

"Dama-May" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

And just for poops and grins and comparison purposes, here is the exact same sequence with no music at all.

Gosh, I wish I actually taught this stuff! What great assignment this would be, take the same video sequence and change the mood with music...or take the same music, and apply it to different videos.

Create a short video about you.

I used Spark Video to create my short video. I admit, I cheated a bit...I took a video I did for another #AdobeGenPro course and modified it. I also used Spark Post for the title slide and the knitting one. I recorded the video on my webcam.

Normally, I like Spark for doing short, engaging videos quickly, but boy, did it fight me on this one. I kept getting errors while trying to create the link or download the video. Eventually, though, I made it work...and it came in at exactly 20 seconds!