Big Brother in your school Day 5: Editing video

This is the fun bit!

To edit footage and select the most relevant facts and comments, Guy and Amanda worked closely together. Guy worked on the initial designs and Amanda edited the movie footage, reduced the file sizes and saved them in a format Guy could use to insert them into the site.

To edit the movie footage we used a piece of free software called iMovie 3. This can only be used on a Macintosh. You can obtain this software free from the Apple website (external link).

Amanda used the timeline to edit the clips. We also used the timeline to measure the time length of the clips. We limited the total clip length to 1 minute to ensure that the file size was small enough to be downloaded quickly.

We had to use QuickTime Pro 6 to reduce the size of the clips and save them in the Windows Media Player format, and convert the clips into black and white.

In case people with hearing or sight problems had difficulties with the video format, we put a text version of the interviews alongside the videos.

Guy then made small GIF animations using the video shots to feature on the 'Viewpoints' menu. This meant that people using the site would be able to see the animated buttons even if their web browsers weren't set up to view video. Some users can't view video because they don't have the right plug-ins installed on their computer..