Hi Darren, Ross,
I wanted to show you how the video editing is going so far. Because I can’t simulate the interaction of a DVD menu, I created one video with several sequences in the chronological order that they will appear on the DVD: the introduction, the DVD menu, the safe working practices and the mason’s hand tools.
You will see that I recorded myself narrating the voice-over as I needed to see how the images fit to audio part. Please ignore the weird accent and the various mistakes. We’ll replace the voice-over with the one you’ll record there with an actor at a later stage of the production.
The introduction part presently has only blurred images with Ross as a background. The plan is to create a short video clip with images portraying Ross while working instead of the blurred images. However, I do believe that you’d need some proper historic buildings imagery and also some images portraying the banker masons in action but also fixer masons, carvers or monumental (we can use photos here). I also think that a valid option is to give up entirely on this introduction piece, as it is really short, quite schematic I’d say, and not really linked with the rest of the DVD (for instance you don’t mention, after listing the four types of masons, which one is going to be explained further on during the video). This is how I would see the DVD starting:
1 – the disclaimer, written on screen with blurred images of Ross on the background (and also spoken?)
2 – video with similar images, voice over saying “The aim of this video is to compliment…”, all the way to the last bullet “A summary of stone used by masons”.
3 – the bullet list at the end of the previous sequence is transformed into the interactive DVD menu, used to jump to any specific section, (safe working practices, the mason’s hand tools, etc but also the option of replaying the intro part with the disclaimer).
You can better see what I am suggesting if you compare the attached .odt document with the one you sent me a while ago. The rows in red are changed as opposed to what you wrote initially. Note that in the sample video (link further down) I used the above order while keeping all the introduction text you wrote in the script.
At 01:52 in the video (link further down) I simulated the DVD menu using a static image with all the menu items and with music. At this point, on the final DVD the playing stops and the viewer needs to select one item of the menu. In my sample video the playing continues and you can see how “Safe working practices” and “The Mason’s cutting techniques” would look like. All text inserts are pretty basic at this stage, they can be further edited (made more visible if needed).
One thing about the youtube player: the general quality of the image is not optimal as youtube is recompressing the uploaded video. The result has too much of a contrast and that’s why some parts of the image look too dark (like Ross’s shoes at the beginning of “Safe working practices”). The original image is much better and it will look better on the final DVD.
There is one way to enhance the quality of the video in the youtube player: in the lower bar of the player you click to change quality to 720p. You can use the Space bar on the keyboard to pause the playing at any moment.
UPDATE March 5th 2013
Following is the Exercise 1 edit. There are some small changes to the script, you’ll see them in the document sent by email.
UPDATE March 13th 2013
Here is the Part A of the Exercise 3, the creation of the Ovolo Template.
Part B of the Exercise 3, the creation of the Ovolo Template. Just a little over one hour.