Saturday 1 August 2015

YouTube's Online Video Editor

A little known YouTube secret is that it now has its own online video editor. This means that if you've already uploaded some video clips, then want to merge  two or more together, cut bits out, or add cross fades and captions, this is now incredibly easy to do. Absolutely no software is needed.

Just go to www.youtube.com/editor



This simple but effective tool is proving useful to the Peregrine Project Team, as we frequently upload clips for inserting into this Blog. The one problem we have found is that our newest camera, (an Axis P3364VE IP camera which looks out from the back of the peregrine falcon's nest) has movement detection which records little clips for later retrieval.  Unfortunately it rarely records the whole sequence in one go, so a number of consecutive clips have to be downloaded from its internal SD card. These clips also come in an usual format (Matroska .MKV) which are difficult to view or edit with familiar software. Luckily they can be watched in our favourite free software programme (IrfanView), and also directly uploaded to YouTube in that format, which thankfully does the converting for us.

So, with one's clips uploaded, it's just a simple task of dragging the required clips into a sequence, cutting out the unwanted bits, and adding titles and fades as required. It even lets you add a background soundtrack, though we've not used that facility yet.

The video above was put together in just a few minutes using four clips made from our ringing day back in May this year. Once edited and saved, we then deleted the original clips so as not to bloat our YouTube channel.



Footnote: For those wondering when Stream 4 will be coming back, we can tell you it should be available after August 3rd. The problem was caused by sudden changes that our webcam host, Streamdays required Derby City Council to make to their firewall. Streamdays  needed to change their servers and, in order to continue pulling the live images from the new nest camera, they needed security changes made at our end. The security committee at the Council who need to consider and approve all such changes has now met, and these will be enabled soon. Had we received a few week's notice this problem wouldn't have occurred, but I'm afraid it was beyond anyone's control here in Derby. Thank you all for your understanding.

3 comments:

Linda said...

That's brilliant so good to see. Thank you and well done. Will anyone be going up to sort the scrape before next year at all?

Nick Brown (DWT) said...

Hi Linda: we may make an inspection visit to the platform/scrape sometime in the autumn to assess its condition - after all, it's been there since 2006!
Usually we leave cleaning out the nest area until February when we can clean the lenses prior to the new season.
We'll keep you posted....
The project team

Heather said...

Just watched video of chicks being collected for ringing, and the rather indignant one just in shot obviously making its feelings known afterwards - bet it was the large feisty female! Think its her that's still just visible on tower at night.

Being a bit of a technophobe I'm not sure I understood all of the details but thanks for info anyway. Looks like we'll have to raise some more funds just in case a new scrape is required next year, particularly after this year's young have left it in such a mess. Hopefully it only needs a general tidy up but if a new platform is required I would hope The Falcons Cricket Team would be shamed into a generous donation. After all where would Derby be without its Peregrines.