Online Roving Ranger Video Production

8 - 15 Post Production

Your ability to follow through on the post production portion of this manual will depend greatly on your understanding of the Adobe Premiere video editing program. I formerly used Apple’s Final Cut Pro (FCP) to do my editing but since the NPS generally only supports PC systems and programs, FCP is an impractical solution for most NPS units. I switched to Premiere so I'd be in a better position to teach video editing to other NPS employees when the time comes to do that.

The best way to learn the functions of a wide variety of programs is through the Lynda.com series of online software training videos. You can learn a great deal about all the programs that will make your life easier in video production.

There are three programs I use regularly while creating videos. They are Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. If you're not sure what to study, you won't go wrong by studying those three programs in that order.

Adobe Premiere
If you are trying to produce videos on a shoestring budget, learn how to use Adobe Premiere Elements. I recently produced 15 Inside Yellowstone episodes with that program to be sure it could do everything I needed it to do. While I prefer using Adobe Premiere Pro, Elements was able to do the job. Premiere Elements is available for under $100 making it perfect for people on a tight budget.

In my experience, Adobe Premiere Pro crashes less often than Premiere Elements. It also offers a great deal of functionality that Elements does not. While you can certainly get by without all those extra bells and whistles, it's a lot of fun to experiment with new techniques. Unfortunately the full version of Premiere Pro for Windows costs nearly $800.

You will find that it is sometimes very difficult to find or shoot the video footage for your b-roll but you can find still images that are perfect. That's especially true when you're working on cultural history videos or rare animals or occurances. When that happens, it's time to incorporate still images into your project. Special effects in both Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro allow you to zoom in and out of a photo as well as scan across it.

Adobe Photoshop
To prepare your photos for use in a video, I recommend learning Adobe Photoshop. Here again the full version of Photoshop is quite expensive, costing nearly $700. If you buy the Elements version bundled with Premiere Elements, the two programs can be purchased for about $140. If your park can afford to buy you the full version, I recommend it, but you will find the Elements version will be able to handle most of your photo editing needs.

Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is a great program for creating and editing maps. I typically take maps created by others and edit them in Illustrator so they are perfect for my videos. That typically involves enlarging labels so they are plainly visible in the videos.

You can look at training programs samples at Lynda.com free of charge. If you decide to join for one month, to use the all of their training programs, you can buy it for merely $25. Once you see how valuable it is, you will very likely decide to join for a year at a very reasonable rate of only $250. Buying the higher priced offering with extra training materials is usually not necessary, at least it hasn’t been for me.

I am not affiliated with Lynda.com in any way. My unsolicited endorsement comes from the value I have personally gained by attending their online training sessions.

THIS SECTION WILL ULTIMATELY BE BROKEN DOWN AS FOLLOWS:

Chapter 8 - Finding Necessary Images
Locate still images and b-roll that were previously shot.

Chapter 9 - Capturing and Importing with Adobe Premiere Elements
Capture video clips and import still images to the video editing program

Chapter 10 - Editing with Adobe Premiere Elements
Combine the clips and images on the timeline

Chapter 11 - Finishing Touches with Adobe Premiere Elements
Add introductory and credits screens.

Chapter 12 - Compress Streaming Video
Compress the video for online streaming.
See the Video Tutorials for instructions already prepared on this Topic

Chapter 13 - Compress for Use in iTunes
Compress the video for online download - podcast.

Chapter 14 - Posting Video through the CMS
Post the streaming video to your web site.

Chapter 15 - Write the iTunes Feed
Create an iTunes podcast with the download video.

Eventually I would like to include video tutorials to explain how to use Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Illustrator in the creation of ORR videos

This web site is being created in my off-duty hours so I can't promise regular updates but I will do my best to keep the ball rolling.

Tom Cawley
Online Roving Ranger Video Production
tom@rovingranger.com