Digital Video Deliverable

Process Steps

1. I used a digital video camera.
2. I originally planned to do much of the taping facing the front of the store, but since we had to do the taping during the day, the light shining through the windows made everything in the forefront appear dark. I had to improvize a little and change the angles at which I taped the action. This also interferred with my desire to tape the cashier's computer screen. I thought this would be a great addition to the video, but the lighting at any angle wouldn't work.
3. My actors consisted of my wife posing as the customer and the Kroger cashier posing as the Kroger cashier. The deal that I made with the store was that I would simply check out (do it quickly - less than 10 minutes) and would not ask anything extra of the employees. I did ask a little of the cashier, including stopping at points throughout the process so that I could change positions and redoing some of her actions.
4. I was able to tape the check out process three times, which is better than I thought.
5. I plugged the video camera into my computer using the firewire connection.
6. I used Adobe Premiere to capture the entire video into one master .avi file.
7. I edited out 12 usable scenes from the master. I did this by using the razor tool to cut out the segments that I did not want and then used the ripple delete function to not only delete the segments, but to get rid of the gaps at the same time. Isolated in the timeline, I then exported each timeline as a separate.avi file.
8. I opened a new project.
9. I then inserted all of these files into the new project.
10. I dragged them into the timeline in the order that I wanted them to appear.
11. I then went through all of the scenes and edited out unwanted audio. One such piece was the loudest sneeze and "bless you" that you have ever heard. I thought that this would be difficult, but the continuous background noise, especially the beeping of the scanners, made it easy to cut audio from other parts of the timeline and paste them into the problem areas. To do this I had to lock the video track, use the razor tool to cut the audio at the desired points, delete it, find a good audio segment, use the razor tool to mark that area, copy the segment, and paste it into the gap from the deletion.
12. I then exported this timeline as a movie (.avi) and again had one master file.
13. This master file was then divided into 3 separate files (same processes as above): checking out, paying, and bag it & go.
14. In each of these files I added a project title (Kroger: the Check Out Process), a file title (Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3), and segment titles (checking out, the divider, scanning the groceries, etc...).
15. Titles were added by selecting the add a new title option from the file menu. This opens an editor that allows you manipulate the graphics and text to some degree. I created the titles in here, much the same as adding backgrounds and text to a PhotoShop image.
16. On saving these titles they appear in the project window.
17. I dragged these titles to their appropriate spots in the timeline. The default was 5 seconds for each of these. I saw that that was too long and changed them all to 3 seconds. This was plent of time to read the titles (even for non-native speakers).
18. When adding titles this way, there is no sound. I found this awkward, so I decided to add audio using the same method as in #11.
19. Finally, I added transitions. I did this inbetween titles and scenes and in one case within a scene (between hering the total and going to the credit card reader.
20. I used a fade in and fade out effect for the beginning and ending scenes. I did this with the Quicktime Transitions in the Transitions menu. I dragged the icon into the timeline in the Transitions track and then chose the fade option from the options window that popped up (changing the values to fade in and fade out). I also had to made the end of the transition match the end of the area that I wanted the effect to appear in (instead of between the scenes). I did this by simply dragging that area in the Transitions track to the desired position.
21. I used the same method for the transitions from title to scene. Instead of the Quicktime Transitions, I used the Wipe >> Insert Transition.
22. I then exported all of these again as .avi files.
23. I opened the program Cleaner 5. This is a great program that can do a multitude of conversions and gives the user a great amount of control.
24. I had to experiment with this for a while, but found that the best quality with the smallest file size was the Quicktime (.mov) Large Progressive Download Option. Using this option, I changed the screen size to 320x240, the frames per second to 15, the audio to 22,200 MHz, 8 bit, Mono, download speed 56.6 Kb/s and the quality to 3 (on a 10-scale). This reduced the file sizes about 10 times to about 2Mb per video.
25. I chose progressive download for a couple reasons. First, you can play the video while it is downloading. Second, and most important, the browser caches the video so the user and replay the video at the speed of the computer and not the speed of the download, whereas streaming forces the user to wait for the server for all playbacks.
26. I then processed these, resulting in 3 movie files.
27. FIN

The Products

I've embedded all three parts of my video here, but I recommend that you check out these embedded in the relevant pages of the website (just follow the links)