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ADD YOUR AUDIO TRACK
If your video comes with its own audio track, this is
combined with it on Track 1. You can adjust its volume
via the Properties pane—scroll down and experiment with the
“Volume” setting. Set it to 0.5 or 0.7 to reduce the volume, or
increase it to 2, 3, or 4 if it’s too quiet. This should be enough, but
it’s also possible to extract the audio as a separate clip.
>> Right-click the clip and choose “Separate Audio.” You’ll see
two options: A single clip combines all audio channels as one,
while if your clip has more than one audio channel (typically left
and right), choose “Multiple Clips (each channel).” The audio
clips sit on top of the current video clip, so now is the time to drag
them off to their own separate tracks. At this point, you need to
create new tracks. Click the green “+” underneath “Timeline,”
then rename the track accordingly. A black square appears
over the top of your video—that originates from the audio track.
Open the audio track’s properties and set its “Scale” property to
“None” to remove it. Once done, you can manipulate each audio
track independently of the main video track.
>> You can also add additional audio tracks—such as a piece
of music—to play over your movie. Drag the music file into the
Project Files pane if you’ve not done so already, then switch to
the “Audio” tab, and drag the file on to its own track. Preview your
movie and you should hear the music track playing over the top of
any audio in your original clips.
>> Again, you can adjust the volume of your music track
using the “Volume” property, but manually tweaking different
audio tracks can be awkward, particularly in relation to other
tracks. A semi-automated solution is available in the form of the
“Volume Mixing” property. For example, to give your soundtrack
prominence over the background audio, set its “Volume Mixing”
property to “Reduce” [Image D ], then select each video clip on
Track 1 in turn, and set its volume mixer to “Average.” If you’d
prefer the music to be in the background, reverse the settings.8
FINISHING TOUCHES
Thanks to OpenShot’s support for multiple tracks, you
can experiment with placing images, captions, or video
clips on top of other clips—create a new track, drag your content
on to it, and watch as it blocks out the video track completely. You
can adjust its transparency using the overlaid element’s “Alpha”
property (try 0.5 for a semi-transparent effect), or experiment
with other settings, such as adjusting its size or position.
Alternately, the Chroma Key effect is a rough and ready way to
introduce green-screen effects by removing plain backgrounds.
Just select your “Key Color” from the effect’s Properties, and
use the “Fuzz” property to refine the edges [Image E].
>> If you want to add text to your movie—in the form of a
title, subtitles, or explanatory captions, say—check out theEbox opposite on adding titles. Use the static title tool
to generate captions—most come with transparent
backgrounds, enabling you to lay them over the top of
your video clips without blocking them out.9
EXPORT YOUR FINISHED VIDEO
Once your movie is complete, choose “File >
Export Video.” Most of the options here are self-
explanatory—choose a file format (the universal MP4
with h.264 codec in most cases), video profile (frame
rate and resolution size), and quality setting. For best
results, try to match the initial resolution of your video
clips—failing that, try a lower quality setting. Finally,
click “Export Video” and sit back. This can take some
time to complete, even for a relatively short video, and
depends on the speed and spec of your PC. A progress
bar and estimated time until completion tell you how
long you’ve got to wait, but the conversion rate will vary
at certain points in your movie.
>> The progress bar speeds up and slows down
during points of the conversion based on the number
of tracks being processed, but in all likelihood, you’ll
need to make a cup of tea for even a relatively short clip.
If your exported movie experiences playback issues,
try exporting again using different presets. Still no
luck? Scale back the number of effects, or investigate
upgrading your PC to handle the demands of video
editing better. Look for a modern multicore processor, a
minimum of 8GB of RAM, and a fast SSD drive.D r a g a p h o t o o n t o t h e t i m e l i n e a n d i t a p p e a r s i n y o u r m o v i e f o r
10 seconds by default; choose “Edit > Preferences > General
tab” to edit this via the “Image Length (seconds)” setting. We
recommend overlapping images to produce a more seamless
switch between them using the Fade effect.
Image-based slideshows can appear rather static, even with
the transition effects in place. One way to inject some more
pizzazz is to make use of OpenShot’s various Animate effects.
Right-click the photo to reveal a pop-up menu of options. Use the
“Rotate” menu to correct the orientation of portrait photos,
then examine the options under “Animate.”
One potential issue with rotated photos is that the top and
bottom get chopped off. One solution is to use “Animate > Start
of Clip > Zoom > Zoom out (100% to 75%),” but another is to
edit the clip’s properties: Right-click it and choose “Properties.”
In the Properties pane, click and drag the “Location Y” slider
right to pull the image down, or left to pull it up. Alternately,
double-click inside and enter a figure manually—try -0.15 or
0.15. Use the “Scale X” and “Scale Y” figures to crop further.ADD PHOTOS
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