From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

What you should know before watching - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

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What you should know before watching

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- [Instructor] While this course is specifically for professionals that don't have any knowledge of nonlinear editing, there are a few things that you should probably know before we begin. In fact, I'd say, broadly speaking, you should know these things before you get into postproduction in general. These are just areas of knowledge without which it's going to be difficult to make head or tail of some of the things we're going to discuss. So, here's a short list of things that you should know, in broad terms. First of all, you probably need to know about basic video technology. That means you need to know that cameras exist, that they record, usually, into files these days, perhaps into tape in some cases. You need to know that those files need to be transported, and how to get those onto your computer. You need to know things like timecode, and I would say that, in my experience of teaching nonlinear editing and production skills for well over a decade, usually the finest illustration of a student's understanding is whether or not they know what timecode is. If you know what timecode is, you're going to get through this course just fine, because in order for you to understand timecode, you also need to understand about frames, about time, about measuring time, and I suppose, to a degree, you have to understand a little bit about metadata. That's data about data, information that's associated with media files. If you don't know what timecode is and you're starting this course, you'll be okay, you'll be able to follow along, and you'll learn how to edit with Media Composer. But you'll find it easier to take in the techniques that have been demonstrated if you've got this fundamental understanding of professional video. Timecode is something that you might never encounter if you're working just with consumer electronics. But Media Composer is a pro piece of software, and we're using professional tools. You also ought to know, I suppose, that there are multiple video formats. And that means a specific frame size and frame rate, a particular way that the information is stored by the camera, whether it's as a file on its own, as you will see, perhaps, using DSLRs, a Quicktime or an MXF file, even now, or whether it's a raw file, like an R3D from a red camera or Canon roll, for example, or a Sony roll. Or, for that matter, if it's what I would broadly describe as a fragmented file type like P2 or XDCAM, where the video and audio information is stored in separate folders. Even if you don't understand that much about those individual formats, it's a good idea to know that they exist. And finally, it's pretty important that you know how to use your computer operating system. You certainly don't need to be an expert, but you need to know what a click is, you need to know what a right click is, you need to know what double clicking does, and you need to know things like how to rename a file and how to move or copy a file from one storage location to another. Funnily enough, quite a lot of people learn to use computers the hard way. They just sit down at it and fight with it until it does what they need. And you'd be amazed how much more efficient you can become, in general, by taking a few hours out to study a beginner's guide to the operating system you're using, whether it's Mac OS or Windows. Just a few hours of learning about how the system is put together can drastically speed up your use of the system, and therefore everything that you do with it. Still, I don't want to frighten you with a long list of complex skills that you might need to go through this course. I'll be explaining absolutely everything as we go through. The important thing is that we can maximize your understanding. And if you have a baseline of understanding about things like video technology, it's going to make it that much easier to take in what I'm describing.

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