How to extend the beginning of a shot?

[Andrew Wilson]

Well, here’s one way but I think the technique will look funny…

From where the head appears, go forward about 10 frames and click CTRL-V to add an edit.

Now set the timeline marker on the last fame before the add edit and hit match frame (f).

Set an outpoint in the source window on the match frame.

Now back up in the source window to the first good frame where the head appears and set an in point.

Now go to the edit side and set an in point on the first frame. Drag the source monitor to the edit monitor and select Fit To Fill.

But here’s a better option… cover the b-roll will some kind of graphic that summarizes what the person is about to say… or their name or anything other than the 2 seconds of b-roll. I think the lip-sync being off using the above technique will be far more offensive.. my 2 cents.

Andrew Wilson
WestView Digital Video & Design
http://www.westviewdigital.com

[Mark Suszko]

You can’t put back what you don’t have. If you have access to the original clip, or you digitized enough of the other clip, or left sufficient “handles” on the ends of the digitized raw clips, then it is easy to trim or mark and razor-out the video of the previous shot, then drag the front of the next shot back to the left until it meets the first word of dialog.

If you are saying you are stuck with a piece of finished video and none of the source material that made it, then you have a creative editing problem indeed. You might try searching thru the entire piece for a short section with the guy’s face on-camera saying something that will act as a lead-in to the next statement. Making the two shots different sizes, i.e. one a closeup, one wider, will help, because a jump-cut between too-similar shots will look weird.

You could do a stylistic thing, using a still frame of the guy with a nice expression, maybe adding a lower third or colorizing it,with the voice underneath, then cutting or effecting back to the regular footage, but then you will pretty much be married to using that technique everywhere in the piece for other people talking, or other sections of the SAME guy talking, to keep it consistent and not give away that you had to do it to cover a missing piece.

[Chris Catalano]

Andrew, Dave and Mark,

Thanks for all the suggestions. I greatly appreciate it. So ideally the simple solution would have been to put a title graphic over black for the first few seconds of each section. Unfortunately, the footage already has names and titles as lower thirds throughout the whole piece. So that would be redundant. I like the idea of maybe putting a quote or statement first, but the sections are only like 7 – 10 seconds each. So in order to have the quote on screen for a comfortable time, it would probably be up as long as the person speaking. Maybe that’s not horrible, but it would definitely have to be repeated for all of the other sections to keep it consistent.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to anything other than this finished piece. But I’ll monkey with some of these idea and see what looks good.

Thanks.

[David Gudaitis]

If you are only missing one second of the person talking, frankly I think what is edited in the program now is preferable to the other proposed solutions. IMHO with no knowledge of what it actually looks like and no way to get to the original footage.