V _ I _ D _ E _ O ___ E _ D _ I _ T _ I _N_ G With your voiceover and soundtrack in place, go back and fill in your video tracks, overlapping them in the A and B tracks as described on an another page. Now that you know have a better idea of how long each still image needs to be on the screen to match your voiceover, here are some tips on how to manipulate image length easily. D _ u_ r _ a _ t _ i_ o _ n ___ o _ f __ s _t _ i _ l _l_sS When you import still image clips into your Project Window, you may have noticed they are all one fixed length; the default is usually one second. There are a couple of ways to lengthen clips. If you double click on a still image clip in your Construction Window, its Clip Window will appear. In the lower left-hand corner is the Duration button. Click on it, and the Timecode Window appears. You can set the duration as long as you need by typing in the appropriate numbers. Remember you are using SMPTE timecode, where 0.00.5.00 is 0 hours, 0 minutes, five seconds, and no frames. Close the window and you can see how you have adjusted the time. The other method of lengthening a clip is using the stretch pointer. When you place the cursor near the left or right edge of a clip it becomes a red vertical line with a double-pointed arrow through the center. By clicking down and dragging to the left or right you can adjust a clip to the appropriate length. For example, if you marked in a voiceover clip where a still image clip is to appear, you simply stretch the still image between the two markers. V _ i _ d _ e _ o ___c _ l _ i _ p _ s _ With working with video on your computer, you often want to capture as close to the precise duration of the material you are planning to use. But inevitably, you may find you want to trim the ends of the clip to get precisely the section you want. Or you may want to repeat the small sections of a video clip for a specific effect. As with still images, you can adjust the duration in a couple of ways. The easiest way is similar to a still image using the stretch pointer at the right and left edge of the clip. Before we try this let’s click on the Edge Viewing tool on top left-hand corner of the Construction Window. The little rays appear when the tool is turned on. Now when you bring your cursor next to the right edge of a video clip, it becomes the stretch pointer. Drag to the left and watch in the Preview Window as your video clip appears to rewind. Wherever you stop will become the new out point for your video clip. Just that simple. If you want a bit more refined way to edit video, you can also double click on the video clip in the Construction Window, and up will come a Video Clip Window. As with audio, you can play through with your space bar. With video, using the slider on the bottom left of the Clip Window, or the scrolling bar in the middle can be very helpful. There is also a way to forward one frame at a time with the Frame Advance Buttons above the Play and Stop buttons under the clip. Note that if you take the Slider and move it to the beginning of the clip (all the way to the left) that the word IN appears in a grey box to the left of the clip. Conversely, if you go to the right end, the word OUT appears on the right. This is how in and out points are indicated for video clips. Resetting the in and out points for video is similar to how you learned to do it for audio clips. Choose a point in from the beginning of the clip with the slider, click the IN button to the right of Clip Odometer. This becomes the new IN point. If you go to the other end and come in a bit from the end of the clip and click OUT, you will set a new out point. Close the Clip Window and you will see the clip has shortened in the Construction Window, just as you had done with audio clips. A _ u _ d _ i _ o ___ t _ r _ a _ c _ k _ s __ Look at the piece of video used in "A Recipe" as it appears in the Project Window. It has an audio track, which wasn't used in the final movie. How was it removed? When you drag video with sound into the Construction Window, the audio track comes along for the ride and drops into an available audio track under the video track. If you want to delete the audio now, do just that. Select the audio track in the Construction Window and hit delete on your keyboard. It's gone as part of your movie. The audio track is still part of your file of course. Say you wanted to keep the audio track, but you just didn't want it to be heard at the same time the video plays. You can move the video and audio portions of the clip independently using the Link Override tool, which is described in the next section along with the other Construction Window tools. Next: Moving Around in the Construction Window