Effects - Intro

Most video editing packages now come with a fairly large assortment of effects. There are audio effects and video effects. Effects “do something” to the audio or video in the clip. For example, adding the audio effect “delay” to track of someone speaking will produce and echo effect. In general there are two types of effects that you will find - those that are intended to “correct” your clip and those that do some artistic or unusual to the clip. An example of an effect that is used to “correct” a clip is one that reduces noise from the audio or adjusts the contrast of the video.

Before we go too far, keep in mind that some effects take a very long time to render and so you should use them sparingly or plan way ahead.

Effects in General

In general, you can add effects by dragging them on to the clip in the timeline. Depending on your software, an effect may have a number of parameters that you can customize.

Transitions

Transitions are a type of effect that happens between two clips. For example, you might want to have one clip fade into another. Like effects, there are a large number of transitions. As mentioned earlier, most professional films and videos use either no transitions at all or simple cross dissolve or fades.

Titles

Titles aren’t effects but ended up here! By “Titles” I am referring to into Titles, end credits and any other text that might be added. Generally, there is Titles interface that allows you to choose the font, size, color and other aspects of the text to be added.

Specific Examples

See how these are done in

• Adobe Premiere Elements
• iMovie

Activity

Open the project from the last activity (or use other footage that you have). Experiment with effects and transitions. Find two that you can tell the rest of the class about.