Before cutting, motion pictures were essentially continuous, unedited films of
something similar to a stage play. The camera would capture everything in the
same shot. Cutting involved the physical cutting up of reels of film in order
to skip or remove sections of the recording. This allowed film makers to experiment with films that had multiple shots. One if the first multi-shot films was Come Along Do! directed by Robert W. Paul. It was made up of two shots, the second of which showing continuity from the first.
Later, film makers would make more complex use of cutting, such as Voyage Dans Le Lune by Georges Méliès where he used jump cuts to make objects and characters appear and to imply action that is unseen, such as the famous shot of the rocket hitting the face of the moon.
Moviola
The Moviola was a device that allowed editors to view film as they edited it so they could work out the best place to make a cut. It was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924 and became the most popular method of editing film - a position held by the Moviola until the 1970s.
Flatbed Edit Suites
The flatbed editor was a editing machine that used motorised discs called plates to hold and manipulate film. There was a plate for visual film and one for magnetic audio tape. The plates can move independently or locked together after picture and sound have been synchronised. It used a prism to reflect the film image onto a viewing screen. The flatbed was much easier to use than the Moviola, so it made editing much more accessible to independent film makers.
Linear and Non-Linear Editing
Linear editing is a term mostly associated with editing using video
tape. In linear video editing, edits must be made in sequence and it is
very difficult to make changes later. This is because editing with video
tape involves recording selected sections of the source tapes onto a
master tape. If they editor wanted to make a drastic change to a
previous part of the master tape then they would have to start again
fresh or rerecord over all of the old footage, with the latter causing a
loss in quality.
This style of video editing was necessary
during the time that video tape was the most common medium for video
recording. Editing with film was somewhat more flexible as it could be
physically cut and rearranged, something not possible with video tape.
Linear editing fell out of common use with the rise in popularity of non-linear editing computers.
Non-linear video editing refers to editing using a non-linear system
such as Avid or the more modern option of an editing program on a pc
such as Adobe Premier Pro, Lightworks, or Final Cut Pro.
As video
data is stored digitally and can be randomly accessed by the computer,
the editor can assemble clips and make changes in any order they like.
This makes editing much easier and therefore more accessible to
everyone.
Non-linear video editing is the most common type of
editing used today both professionally in studio productions and by amateurs and hobbyists, although older mediums of recording and editing
styles are not completely obsolete.
Offline and Online Editing
Offline video editing is the first stage of editing where lower resolution copies of the raw footage are imported into an editing suite. Cuts are made and takes are assembled so that the overall structure and flow of the production is established. The changes made to the footage are recorded in an edit decision list.
More complicated edits such as colour grading, special effects, and sound mixing are made in the online editing phase.
Historically this was done using copies of video tape.
The Digital Era
The first digital non-linear editing system was the CMX-600 introduced in 1971. It was a two monitor machine mainly used for offline editing due to the low quality it worked on. So editors would use the CMX-600 to create an edit decision list that would be passed on to online editing.
Another non-linear video editing system was the Edit Droid of 1984. It was produced by Droidworks which was a spin-off company of Lucas Film. The Edit Droid was not a commercial success, but it did represent a jump in technology in the field as it was laserdisc based, an upgrade from the disk pack drives of the CMX-600. The software of the Edit Droid was also pioneering as it was the first editing suite to use a 'timeline' to organise clips, a tool which is standard in modern editing suite programs.
The Avid 1 was another digital non-linear editing system. It was based on a Macintosh computer with special hardware and software made by Avid. It became popular in the 1990s and replaced much older linear systems as the new most common professional system.
Modern Editing Platforms
Modern editing suites come in the form of software which can be installed on any computer that has sufficient hardware for video editing. The most popular ones are Adobe Premier Pro, Apple's Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, and Lightworks. Many of these packages are affordably priced and have accessible minimum hardware requirements, making video editing more accessible than ever as it no longer requires a massive investment. However, it should be noted that higher end productions and a better workflow can be achieved with more expensive hardware.
Types of Film Stock
Film stock is the original material used to record images and motion pictures. The first variation was developed by The Eastman Company in 1889 and it was an important component of Thomas Edison's motion picture camera.
There is a wide variety of different film stocks. Different types are often differentiated by their gauge in mm and the varieties in their perforations. Variations include 8mm (and Super 8), 16mm, 35mm, 65mm, 70mm and more.
Digital video comes in different file types. The file type affects how the data is encoded and stored, known as the codec and container. A more efficient codec compresses data to reduce the file size while preserving quality.
.WEBM is a file format created by Google and is commonly used for online video streaming, most notably on Youtube. It is designed to keep file sizes small and so compromises on quality.
.MPG, .MPEG and other similar formats can play audio and/or video. They use lossy compression so are better for storing video that will not be edited many times or not at all, as quality will be lost each time.
.MP4 can also play audio and video. They are widely used in online video streaming alongside .WEBM but are generally higher quality and therefore have larger file sizes.
.AVI is one of the oldest video file formats and is therefore one of the most widely compatible and flexible.
.MOV and .QT were developed by Apple for use with their QuickTime player and are therefore more suited for use on Mac computers than Windows. They are good for higher quality video.
Sources:
Filmmaker IQ. The Journey to Non-Linear Editing (Part 2). (2013)
moviola.com. The Moviola Story. Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20120308230830/http://moviola.com/book/export/html/12v
Schrader, P., 2014. Game Changers: Editing. [online] Film Comment. Available at: <https://www.filmcomment.com/article/game-changers-editing/> [Accessed 29 September 2021].
Mediacollege.com. Linear Video Editing.https://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/linear/
Motionelements.com. Understand Linear vs Non-Linear Editing.https://www.motionelements.com/blog/articles/understanding-linear-vs-non-linear-editing
Aipcinema.com. KODAK FILM HISTORY. Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20130515033307/http://www.aipcinema.com/ficheiros/Conteudos/KODAK_FILM_HISTORY.pdf
Filestack. The Complete List of Video File Formats and Codecs for Developers. (2019). Retrieved from: https://blog.filestack.com/thoughts-and-knowledge/complete-list-audio-video-file-formats/
No comments:
Post a Comment