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Today I finished editing the video for the hour-long talk I gave a month ago. It was on the history of the Nevis estate, and is the most recent of the <a href=”http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/events/science-on-hudson.html”>#ScienceOnHudson lecture series</a> at <a href=”http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/”>the lab</a> where I work. <lj-cut>I’m proud of this video. The main reason why is that I had to pull out almost all the tricks in my editing arsenal to make it presentable. I didn’t have to adjust the image within the frame; the speaker actually listened to my instructions and stayed on his mark. But I had to use my editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro) to compensate for everything else: – color correction so the shots wouldn’t have an overwhelming orange cast (our cheap cameras keep seeing orange where the human eye sees white); – audio corrections for the hissing that’s inevitable with our cheap sound system, along with “de-essing” the sound because of the speaker’s weird vocalizing; – cutting around the people who were blocking the main camera during the talk (this happened more during my talk than any of the previous ones); – dealing with the loss of the last 15 minutes of footage from side-view camera; – plus the usual: title cards, background sounds, render options, audio gain, etc. For the first time, I experimented with adding text annotations in the video to correct some mispronounced words (I said “nasal” instead of “naval”) and to put circles around portions of the slides I wish to emphasize. I wouldn’t dare do this for someone else’s talk, but I felt free to do it with mine. My editing tasks are not yet over. I have to identify a few 4-7 minute segments to add to the <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2tRZX4SJfE2TWlRYywXYvw”>Nevis YouTube channel.</a> There are still a couple of other talks that I've edited, but the speakers haven't told me which segments of their talks they want on YouTube. The process will begin again with the next cycle of #ScienceOnHudson talks in September. Compare to a trained video editor, I know nothing. But for the relatively simple editing tasks associated with merging the video from a four-camera setup and creating a (rather bland) educational video, I've self-taught myself enough for a reasonable presentation. It's enough that I'd feel comfortable adding “familiar with Adobe Premiere Pro” to my resume. TLDR: I’ve learned something new! Next on my list of things to learn: IPython. Or maybe Drawings Down. I’m working on both.</lj-cut>