Blog Post #5 - Completing My Final Product

Hey everyone,

For my fifth and final week, I put together everything that I learned in the last four weeks to finish my final project. In the beginning, I was struggling with what I wanted my final project to be. I decided that I wanted to put together a video that would allow me to revisit all of my favorite road trips. By choosing certain video clips that I recorded and editing them to a song by one of my favorite artists, I hoped to recreate the feeling that I had while I was on these trips so I could look back on it and relive these experiences. While making my final project, I ran into a few difficulties. These, however, offered great learning experiences for me and aided in my understanding of video editing.

Moore, Donavan (Oct 17, 2022). Road to Bryce Canyon, Utah [Image].

Struggles / Troubleshooting

As we discussed in week two, when we create something, it must be done ethically. I had a vision for the video that I was going to create, but as I was creating the video, I remembered the copyright rules that we discussed in week two. As a result, I had to look deeper into whether or not I would be allowed to use the song that I had chosen for my video or not. The song that I initially chose was under strict copyright and could not be used, modified, or distributed without permission. I tried to reach out to both the creator of the song and the producers of the song album, but I did not receive an answer. This slowed the process of my final product down and I had to look for a new song to use. After researching some more and revisiting the videos and articles we learned in our week two TPACK quest, I learned that one of my favorite artists, Mk.Gee, released an album with very limited copyright that stated that the song could be used as long as credit was given to the artist, and it was not monetized under a different name. This helped me learn more about fair use and, now when working on future projects, I will consider copyright more prior to starting the project.

Moreover, through the creation of my final product, I learned a lot about the limitations of different platforms, as well as different video codecs and file formats. DaVinci Resolve can export to a variety of codecs and formats, and I was able to modify the bitrate of the final file. In order to save space, I could have exported the file to h.265 (HEVC), a more modern and compressed codec, but it is not as wildly supported as its predecessor. I didn’t want to lose too much quality in the video, and I needed it to be widely compatible, so I exported it in the h.264 codec at a high bitrate in an MP4 container. However, this meant that my three-minute video was over 1GB. When I tried to upload it to Blogger, it notified me that there is an upload limitation of 100MB. As a result, I was unable to upload my video straight to Blogger. To troubleshoot, I uploaded the file to Google Drive and used an embedded link within the “My Product” page on my blog. However, despite the fact that I published the video and allowed anyone with the link to view it, the video would continue to load every time I tried to play it. I believe this was also a limitation due to the file size. In order to get my video to play, I had to upload it to YouTube, publish the video, and embed the video into my Blogger “My Product” page. While this was frustrating, I am also happy with the outcome because YouTube transcoded the file into multiple resolutions so that it can be played at different quality levels and, therefore, is accessible to all viewers.

Moore, Donavan (Oct 17, 2022). Video exporting settings in DaVinci Resolve [Image].

Through creating my final product, I also learned how there are many different aspects to video editing. I had a vision for the final product; I wanted to create a video that helped me relive all of my past road trips. However, I did not consider how the clips that I was going to use were filmed on different devices, they were in different areas, and in different times of the day. This made it difficult to provide visual cohesion throughout the project. Moreover, some of the clips that I wanted to use weren’t very high quality. I was able to counteract this with some videos by changing the coloring, changing the speed of the video, and utilizing visual defects (such as the camera going out of focus) to my advantage. By taking time to get familiar with the clips and the song I chose, I was able to utilize these defects to help create an aesthetic / vibe that reminded me of how I felt during these trips.

Genius Hour

My Genius Hour experience has been one of my favorite things that I have done in university. I love being in the education program, but it was nice to just take some time to focus on one of my passions. I have been putting off learning to video edit for a long time and this was a great opportunity to actually sit down and make an effort. The videos/tutorials that I watched were things I would watch in my spare time, reflecting every week using Blogger was very effective and helped me thinks more critically about the things that I was learning each week, and I enjoyed every aspect of working on my final product. To answer my Genius Hour question, yes - I was able to learn more about video editing and create a project without it feeling like a task. I look forward to using what I have learned to help me continue on my path to learning how to edit.

Through this process, I also learned a lot of valuable things outside of video editing. This assignment helped me see how important it is that my future students are interested in and excited about the things that they work on. The Genius Hour has inspired me to work hard to think of creative and open assignments where my future students can utilize their unique skills. Moreover, I also want to use tools like Blogger in my future classrooms because it is a great way for students to journal about and reflect on their work while also being able to share their process with others.

Best,

Donavan

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