Noob Tutoring?

DemonSpawn · Post by **DemonSpawn** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 1:22 pm

Everything else is too expensive. Adobe products are cheap compared to commercial products like AVID and Media100.

My thoughts on the whole tutoring thing: it's not really necessary. People NEED to make videos that are crap at first. And people need to make opinions on them, telling them why it's crap. The key word is constructive criticism. Time and experience are better in the long run than tutoring.

An instant help line would be nice, but it's not really feasible.

Something that would be nice is if the FAQs or Guides were updated with some of the sticky threads. They'd need to be edited down to the best parts, and it would be a major undertaking, but it would be awesome. (Maybe a link to the guides section at the top of the forum would help?)

In summation, a centralized info resource (FAQ) of the stuff on this forum, a LOT more constructive criticism, time, experience, and a LOT of patience.

Nestorath69 · Post by **Nestorath69** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:12 pm

How about a guide on how to use the editing software itself? I'm personally tired- I've taught 3 different people how to use adobe premiere 6.0 and 6.5 (Yes, I bought both- AND Premiere Pro) but a basic guide on what the typical AMV maker does with the program would be helpful. I can always Tell people to Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>, but when it comes to using Premiere, they're SOL unless I walk them through it.

mckeed · Post by **mckeed** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 4:43 pm

Well....there is a thing called a manual. If they aren't intelligent to use premire after reading a manual or buying one of the many books on the subject they shouldn't be editing. Most likely they aren't paying for it, so the least they can do is buy a book on the subject. Premire isn't really all that hard and there are other options like moviemaker or vegas which I hear are easier to use.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 5:25 pm

I noticed one thing that was mentioned early in the thread and forgotten along the way:

The ability to get feedback on videos before they are completed.

I think that, or at least a re-submission option, would be really nice for that early video where you had a great idea - but, being a newbie, you really screwed it up. For instance, I made a video using the Paul Simon song "You Can Call Me Al" and FLCL, that had a good concept and song choice on but horribly botched through bad editing and a lack of focus. Under the current system there isn't really much I can do to fix that.

For questions and information, the guides are great and I've never had a forum question go unanswered. For advice, the op system seems to be good wherever used by people inclined to write more than "sucks" or "rules" or some variation thereof.

Also - it seems that most of us aren't exactly equally experienced in all areas. Some are very creative, some know an awful lot about music or anime, some know a lot about certain editors or all the technical junk behind video codecs and file formats... "Beginner" and "Expert" are thus probably an ill fit for a lot of people, who may be an expert in one thing and a beginner in another.

Nestorath69 · Post by **Nestorath69** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 10:49 am

The ability to get feedback on videos before they are completed.

That's what transferrs via aim or msn or whatnot are for. not the Org.

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 3:02 pm

I don't know about AIM or MSM as a practical means for that kind of communication, but I think that such a system would only work within projects or pre-established channels of communication between members. That kind of limited-group interaction is precicely what is suggested in the first post, and is something I am using myself right now by hosting an FTP server for a film-length instrumental AMV project I am managing, but has a different set of benefits from being able to make changes to videos after seeing things pointed out in the ops you are given and so forth - where the critical audience consists not of an individual or small goup of people who've attached themselves to the project over its duration, but instead of the larger base of people who happen to download and watch your video and have something to say about it.

Nestorath69 · Post by **Nestorath69** » Thu Apr 15, 2004 3:52 pm

For a n00b, that's pretty smart.

I have to ask, though, when constantly being fed opinions about a video (you should change this, I don't like that, etc) doesn't it stop being your video, and instead becomes a video that they made, through you?

rose4emily · Post by **rose4emily** » Fri Apr 16, 2004 12:03 pm

it wouldn't be constant. you'd work until you're out of ideas, or looking for suggestions of some specific part, and then post what you have - like sending drafts of an book or an article to an editor everytime you think you've made a major improvement or cleaned up a lot of errors. usually the kinds of mistakes that new editors make aren't problems with creativity, which seems to stay pretty constant even with the development of skill, but rather technical blunders (like bad cropping, ugly encoding, and timing errors) and a lack of focus on the intended subject of the video (the scenes are too random, opportunities were missed because a cut was extended for too long instead of including another piece that would fit nicely, or distracting visual jumps and over-done cuts ruin the continuity of the piece). the ideas many new editors have are just as good as those of their more experienced peers, but the new editors are not yet ready to fully and properly express those ideas - like a child with a talent for telling stories but who is just learning how to write. since most ops take a form of "if you were to do this again, it'd be a good idea to watch out for..." it only makes sense to provide new (and experienced) editors the opportunity to actually do it again if they so choose.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Fri Apr 16, 2004 12:51 pm

Well, as someone who's actually involved with the FTP in question, I gotta say that it's very beneficial to have feedback like that. I mean, some minor things aside - it definitely helped me make the video better.

And just because there is feedback, doesn't mean you have to follow it. I've taken a lot of suggestions in ops for one of my vids (including from people involved in the instrumental project), but the final/remaster version features maybe a few improvements out of 100 possible suggestions. Even so, those few were improvements that were initiated by feedback...

***

And I'm all for this sort of collaborative/group approach to helping people improve. Because, really, this isn't so much tutoring in the sense that you have someone giving exact instructions to a new editor, but rather a learning-in-progress, where you learn by editing trial and error, and ways of improvement are suggested based on actual work rather than in theory.

And if new editors are interested in me giving feedback on works in progress - I'm more than interested. But I wouldn't be very interested in just sitting there and explaining them what they could just read in the guides, and then working them through the whole process