Video Editing

Its now time to start editing the video clips and images I’m going to use and add to the timeline. Naturally I started with the opening sequence of the video which included the pegi 18 age rating, Xbox branding and game studio logo I created.

So first I double clicked the video clip, in the video clip bin in the project window, so it would load into the source window for editing. I found the pegi 18 video on YouTube and downloaded it from there as an mp4 file in order to get the highest quality possible.

This particular clip was over 4 seconds long. All I needed from it was the audio and the image and the audio stopped after 2 seconds. So with this in mind I cut the video down in length using the mark in and mark out tools.

Now that the clip was the length that I wanted it I just clicked the insert button in order to add it onto the timeline.

The next clip to add to the timeline was the xbox branding, so once again I loaded it into the source window by double clicking it.

This clip had 17 frames of nothing at the start of it so using step forward/ back 1 frame button I got the clip to a point where the video and audio actually started. Once at the correct point I marked in. The video clip also had about 5 seconds where the audio had finished and there was no more animation in the video, so again using the step forward/ back 1 frame button I got it to the point where the audio had just finished and marked out.

Now my clip was the right length I added it to the timeline with the insert button.

The next step in this preliminary part of the video was to add the game studio logo, that I had previously created in illustrator, to the timeline. This was a simple process as I just dragged and dropped it from the images bin onto the timeline.

The image as it was took up a lot of time and frames on the timeline, however I left it as it was as if I overran the 1 minute run time this is something I could reduce in order to meet my target without having to pull any of my video.

Next in the sequence is the introduction of the game. This starts with an image of space, so again dropped the image of space onto the timeline from the relevant bin in the project window.

This was to be followed by some footage of bowls.

I found some footage on youtube of a bowls game being played so downloaded it. This could be found in the video clips bin I had created. I double clicked the video in order to load it into the source window so I could edit it. I watched through the footage to find some bowls action that I wanted to used and then proceeded to mark in and out around the clip I wanted and inserted it into my timeline.

As you can see in the above image the video does not fit the size of the pane in the sequence playback window, and subsequently does not match the size of the other footage so far. In order to remedy this I double clicked the image and expanded it to fit manually.

Although this remedied the problem it created another one as some of the quality is lost on this particular clip, but in a way I think it works as it fits with the way this game mocks lawn bowls.

Next I added the explosion that would serve as the background when the title flashed up at the end of the intro. This was a quick step as I only had to trim a couple of frames off at each end of the video.

This took me up to the 30 second mark in the timeline so far, which is quite a lot considering I only have a minute to work with but I was not worried as I had left the previous images that could be shortened at the end.

Now I started to add some game footage. Going back to what had been said previously in the blog, this game was going to be more about action and shooting than bowls, as per the “20% more guns 80% less bowls” on the back of the amaray game cover.

With this in mind I sourced my footage from youtube. I wanted some game footage of a sci-fi shoot em up type game and found that from clips of Mass Effect 3 game footage. There were 2 videos in particular that suited my needs. One was a trailer for a DLC package and the other was a video of some multiplayer gameplay that someone had recorded. So I downloaded them in mp4 format and began editing them.

I took 3 clips from the first video, the video of the DLC trailer and added them to my timeline.

I then added 2 clips from the multiplayer footage.

To finish the sequence I added the picture of my game cover that I had previously created in photoshop. I had to load the file in illustrator though in order to save it in a format whereby it could be loaded into premiere and used on the timeline.