Editing Footage

After you have recorded the video with your camcorder, it's time to start editing the footage in a digital video editor such as Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut Pro.

Tip 

Flash 8's new-and-improved Video Import Wizard enables you to edit and sequence cuts within your source video file before it is imported into the Flash document. See Chapter 17, "Displaying Video," for more information.

It's beyond the scope of this book to fully explain the process of editing video footage, but we offer the following pointers to maximize the compression benefits of the Spark codec that the Flash Player uses for video:

• Watch transitions and filter effects: Keep the general rule in mind that we mentioned previously — refrain from global changes to the entire frame. Some effects and transitions, such as cross-fades and slow dissolves, introduce rapid changes to successive frames of video. These changes require more keyframes to retain quality, and these keyframes add significant weight to the file size of the compressed video in the Flash document. Otherwise, if you don't want the extra weight, you'll have to accept less quality in the overall image.

• Minimize duration: The shorter you make your finished video clip, the smaller the file size of your Flash movie (.swf). While you can stream video content just like any Flash content, you should keep in mind the data rate of your target audience.

• Enable only necessary tracks: Use video and audio tracks only if you need both in your final Flash movie. While you can disable the audio in the Flash document's Publish Settings, you can prevent major headaches by importing only the essential material you require.

When you finish editing your video, make a master version that can serve other purposes beyond your Flash movie presentation. You may even want to output a final version of the edited footage to DV tape. In the next section, we discuss what output format to use for your edited footage. Later, this output format will be compressed and embedded in the Flash document.