Creating movie clips from VHS videotapes

Creating Movie Clips

 

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

These instructions have been developed for use with the Media Lab iMac workstations near the Library's Multimedia Collections department. Each iMac has a DVD burner, each iMac is hooked up to a JVC Dual MiniDV/VHS player, and the videos you'll be working with for class may be checked out from the Multimedia desk. The only thing you'll need to bring with you is a flash drive, portable hard drive, or blank DVD-R disc. Note: only DVD-R discs will work with the iMac SuperDrives. Make sure you don't accidentally purchase another kind of disc, like a DVD+R.

COPYRIGHT AND FAIR USE

When creating clips from VHS tapes of movies that are still under copyright, it's necessary to be aware of fair use guidelines so as not to violate copyright law. Fair use determines the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Whether or not the use of copyrighted material can be called "fair use" is determined by four factors:

  1. the purpose and character of use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

In most cases for class assignments at Kenyon, you're using video clips for educational purposes, you're using only a small portion of the total work, and you're not making those clips available in such a way that they would deprive the copyright owner of income (i.e., you're only using them in the context of a class presentation). A rough guideline for acceptable film clip lengths is as follows: up to 10% of the entire movie or 3 minutes, whichever is less.

Making certain that you meet fair use guidelines is your personal responsibility. If Kenyon is notified of a copyright infringement by a member of its student body, faculty, or staff, that individual is responsible for making the necessary changes to comply with copyright law.

For more information about fair use see the following web sites:

Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Center

Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia (CCUMC)

 

CAPTURING VIDEO FROM A VHS TAPE

  1. Make sure that the Mini-DV cassette well is empty
  2. On the right side of the JVC dual deck, find and press the VHS button
  3. On left side of JVC Dual deck, find and press the left arrow button labeled VHS:
  4. Press the Ch (channel) up/down buttons until L-1 or L-2 appears in the JVC deck's right LCD display
  5. Make sure that the monitor on top of the JVC deck is powered on
  6. On the iMac, restart the computer and open iMovie by clicking on the iMovie icon in the Dock:
  7. You'll be asked to create a new project, open a project, or quit. Choose to create a new project, name it, and click on the arrow in the to select the video format to work in.  Select "DV" as you format, and click "Create."
  8. In the iMovie menu bar, click on iMovie > Preferences and look at the "Advanced" section. Make sure that "Play video through to camera" is unchecked then close the Preferences window.
  9. Switch the iMovie control to camera:
    imoviecontrol.jpg
  10. Insert VHS tape into the JVC deck
  11. Use the Play button on the JVC deck to start the tape
  12. Use the FF and/or REW buttons to cue the VHS tape to 15 to 20 seconds before the beginning of the footage you wish to import into iMovie then hit Play again
  13. In iMovie, click on the Import button as soon as video appears in the iMovie window:
    imovieimport.jpg
  14. When you want to stop importing video, click on Import again to stop capture
  15. In the iMovie menu bar, click on File > Save Project to save your work (remember to do this periodically while working on your clips)
  16. Repeat steps 10 to 15 to capture additional clips
  17. Switch the iMovie control to edit when you wish to begin editing your clips:
    imovieedit.jpg

EDITING CLIPS IN IMOVIE

Instructions for editing video can be accessed from movies.atomiclearning.com/highed/imovie_hd.  For the purposes of this project, however, the most useful parts of the documentation are C1: Cropping a Clip and C5: Splitting a Video Clip.

Tip —

The main tool you'll use in editing movie clips is the iMovie scrubber bar which looks like this:

The play head is always present, the crop markers appear when you click under the scrubber bar. Both play head and crop markers can be clicked and dragged. Moving the play head advances the video displayed in the iMovie monitor. The crop markers can be moved to indicate the beginning and end of a portion of the video that you wish to crop.

WORKING WITH IDVD

The following instructions offer a quick, abbreviated means of creating a basic DVD. You can also access section G in the Atomic Leaning Series "Sharing you iMovie Project."

Adding Chapters for each Clip
Adding chapters allows you to title each clip so the final DVD's menu will include "scene selections" making it easy to navigate.

  1. While still in iMovie, drag your edited clips from the Clip Pane into the Timeline in the order in which you wish them to appear
  2. Click on the iDVD Pane button (under the Clip window) to show the iDVD pane
  3. Select the first clip in the Timeline (click on it once to highlight it), then, in the iDVD pane, click on the Add Chapter button
  4. Enter a Chapter Title where indicated (you can rename a chapter by double-clicking on the text)
  5. Repeat steps 3-4 for each clip in the Timeline
  6. Once you've finished adding chapters, save your iMovie project one last time

Exporting Your Project into iDVD

  1. In the iDVD pane, click on the Create iDVD Project button
  2. iDVD will open automatically
  3. Do not close iMovie. Do not make any changes to your project in iMovie. It takes a while for iDVD to encode a movie so that it can be burned to a DVD. Doing anything in iMovie before this process is completed will ruin your project.
  4. In iDVD, click on the Motion icon to turn off motion for the viewing window (this will speed the encoding process)
  5. Click on the Customize icon. This opens a drawer from the left side of the iDVD window
  6. Click on the Status tab. This will show you if your project is encoding with a blue bar indicating how far along the encoding is. Encoding can take a while (roughly twice the time of the length of your movie).
  7. Don't click on anything else till encoding is completed. When it is, the blue bar will disappear and the word "Done" will show instead.

Adding a Theme

  1. Once encoding is finished, click on the Themes tab
  2. Select All from the drop down menu
  3. There are many themes to choose from. Probably the easiest to use for this project are Wedding Bronze One and Marquee. Select one of those themes.
  4. Once you select a theme, it will appear in the iDVD main window showing you what your DVD would look like using that theme
  5. If you click on the Preview icon, you can click on the menu items in the main window and see how your DVD would work
  6. In the iDVD menu bar, click on Advanced > Apply theme to project to apply the theme to the entire project
  7. Click on File > Save Project to save the project

Burning Your Project onto a DVD

  1. Click on Advanced > TV safe are to make sure that none of the items in your DVD's menu will get cut off by a TV screen (the preview in the main window will change to show you the TV safe area's boundaries)
  2. Click on the Motion icon to turn it on (green indicates it's on)
  3. Click on File > Burn DVD
  4. The iMac's CD/DVD tray will open. Place a blank DVD-R in it and close the drawer by gently pushing it.
  5. Do not touch anything in iDVD or iMovie while the DVD burns. Be patient — the process takes about twice as long as the length of your movie.

 

Problems with the JVC DECK?  CHECKING THE JVC DECK SETTINGS

(These should be set by default, but if you find things don't work, use a remote to check them. Remotes are kept in the Multimedia Collections Dept.; you can ask a student workers at the desk for one.)
REAR AUX INPUTVIDEO
FRONT AUX INPUTVIDEO
OUTPUT1AUTO
2ND AUDIO RECORDOFF
AUTO TIMEROFF
SUPERIMPOSEON

VHS MODE SET options should read as follows

S-VHS ETOFF
S-VHS MODEON
VIDEO CALIBRATIONON
PICTURE CONTROLAUTO
DIGITAL TBC/NRON
VIDEO STABILIZEROFF
DIGITAL R3OFF
AUTO SP>EP TIMER
  • Press remote Menu button
  • Use TV CH buttons to navigate down to MODE SET then press OK button
  • MODE SET options should read as follows:  OFF

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    NEED HELP? CONTACT:

    Paul Mollard
    Associate Director for Public Computing
    LBIS
    740/427-5701