When you major in film, you sort of become the official video guy for the family, like editing stills and video your grandfather shot in Israel.
The good thing about an A/V clueless family is the most minor tasks, like making a cut, amazes them, so they’re pretty easy customers. Until they give you weird video files from their still camera.
It all started off well. I brought my grandfather’s photos and videos into Adobe Premiere, and began editing under his supervision. He used to do old-school 8mm editing, so an entire production package in a laptop blew him away.
The footage played back fine, though when I rendered it, it would play back a little choppy. I thought this was the computer being funny (real funny), so I continued editing. Yes, this is the point to shake your head.
Lesson: If the shit doesn’t work on a small scale, making it bigger and investing more time isn’t going to fix it.
You know where this is going. I finished the 20 minute long video, went to export, and guess what? Yeah, it was choppy.
I’ve finally fixed it. Five days later.
If you want all the technical juice, the video was some sort of MPEG Premiere didn’t like. I tried converting the original footage and relinking it to the stuff I edited, but no go. Just to see if something else would take it and I could re-edit it, I tried Final Cut and iMovie, but nothing. I’m kind of happy that didn’t work.
My solution? Export the video as Filmstrip. When I bring this back into Premiere, it still plays choppy. But when I render, boom. Smooth playing video. Export the audio, re-sync them, and yes, boom.
The final product. But I warn you, you will probably want those 20 minutes back.
