This video kicks off a series of 'Feynman technique' tutorials, whereby I attempt to explain a variety of things in a way that a 5 year old child could understand.
Today we look at the amazing free video editing software; Lightworks
When editing a video, you might sometimes want to zoom in on a particular part of the screen. In order to do this you need to use ‘keyframes’.
They are called keyframes because video is made up of lots of individual pictures called frames. When you watch a film in the cinema, each second of film you watch consists of twenty five individual pictures. Therefore we say that the frame rate for a cinema film is 25 fps, which stands for twenty five frames per second.
When we edit the video using keyframes, we choose one frame at the beginning and one at the end. At the starting frame we adjust the video to how we want it to look, or even just leave it alone if we are happy with it.
Then we go to our end frame and adjust the video how we want it to look.
So for instance, we might have a 30 second video of somebody doing tricks on a skateboard, however after 15 seconds we decide that we want to slowly zoom in so that we can see the tricks better.
We would then move the video to the 15 second mark and add a keyframe. Then we decide that we want to be fully zoomed in by 20 seconds. So we would place another keyframe at the 20 second mark. We would then change the size of the video by either using the mouse to select the corners of the picture and drag it out, in the same way you might use your fingers on a picture on your phone. Or for greater accuracy we use the slider controls on the left hand side of the screen.
Once we had the picture zoomed and moved to where we wanted it to be, we could then play back our video. You would then see the video start to zoom at 15 seconds, and finish at 20 seconds.
Keyframes are not just used to zoom in on videos, they are used for anything which was not originally captured by the camera. For instance we can add a fade to the end of a video clip, or change the colours of a particular section of the clip.
Adding keyframes in Final Cut Pro was fairly instinctive, and required the use of the ‘K’ on the keyboard, which would insert a small pink marker onto your video, you could add as many as you wanted, however you always need at least two. A starting point, and ending point.
I am now attempting to use the knowledge I have gained from Final Cut Pro, and work out how to use keyframes using the Lightworks software, so that I can enhance the quality of future video tutorials I’m making.
Free HD video footage: https://www.videvo.net/
Lightworks free video editing software: https://www.lwks.com