Sunday, July 22, 2012

Adobe Media Encoder: Shorten a video and post on a blog

My camera takes videos and produces .avi files. These files can be uploaded and used as is, but what if you want to cut out the end or part of the beginning? This would produce a more concise, professional video.

I used Adobe Media Encoder that came with my Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5.

1. Open the Encoder program and load your video in the Queue by clicking on "+".

2.Click on the video name in the Queue table (make sure format is f4v), then edit, then export settings.

3. Under export settings on the right side, select web 320x240. I unchecked "export audio" because I don't want audio on this clip. Specify the name and location for the new encoded file by clicking on the output name.

4. On the left side, move the white triangles on the yellow timeline to set the beginning and end of your clip. Above the timeline, click the "set in point" triangle for the beginning and "set out point" triangle for the end of the clip. Click "ok" to return to the Queue.

5. Click the white arrow at the top right to start the encoding. When complete, there's an audio signal. You can look for your new file labeled "FC" in the location specified. That file is ready to be uploaded to your blog.


Video of Tobacco Hornworm on Tomato Plant

So, I've accomplished 2 things with the media encoding: 

1- I completed some basic editing of the video length

2- I converted the file to an .f4v type.
There are many options that make this program very powerful. I'll blog more as I discover additional uses.