Here’s the cut: Echo360 has insert editing.
For those of us who don’t have a background in video editing, let me lay down some tracks for you.
You can think of a video as a linear event that holds you hostage for a certain length of time. You can visualize that time as a line. This is why video editing systems tend to represent footage as a timeline. Usually, in one area of a video editing tool we have the timeline, in another, a staging area. A staging area shows all these little clips, like hopeful athletes on the track team waiting to get on the track.
In Echo360, the media editor UI is composed similarly. There’s a playback window on top and a timeline which looks like the image below.
Echo360’s video editor has always been able to cut footage out of the beginning, middle and end. But adding footage in? That was the stuff of distant dreams… until recently! Now you can add footage into your timeline too!
The Echo360 media editor’s insert function works like this: if you have a recorded lecture capture, or any piece of footage in your library, and you want to insert footage at the middle, beginning, or end, you’re going to first open the video to which you want to add footage in the media editor.
From the Echo360 library, find the thumbnail of the video you want and hover over the bottom right. From there, click Edit Media.
Before you enter into the kingdom of editing, you will encounter a warning:
Be brave. Click ok.
Before I go on I should explain that it’s ok to click ok because you are NOT going to save over your work if you choose to “Save As” as shown on the bottom right of the image below.
Once in the editing interface, you’ll see the player window and the timeline.
And in the middle of the image above, you’ll see the adorable little playhead, which reminds me of a bobblehead.
The playhead is like the needle of a record player (I’m dating myself, but I don’t care). You can drag the playhead along the timeline. On either side of the bobblehead you’ll see brackets.
When you click on the bracket on the right, it immediately cuts all the footage from the position of the playhead to the end of the video. Click the left bracket, then all the footage before the playhead disappears.
In the middle of the playhead’s bobble, you’ll see three horizontal lines. If you click on it you’ll the option to insert
When you choose insert, the Echo360 file picker is opened for you, showing all the videos in your library. You may want to home in on the videos of interest by filtering with the search bar.
When you find the clip you want, click Insert. This inserts the video into the track where your playhead is currently located.
Keep in mind, the file picker can only see what’s already in your Echo360 library. So your library is the “staging area” and what you need has to be already uploaded in order to be inserted.
Once inserted, you can refine your track with further edits. When you’re happy, choose to “Save As” and then patiently wait for it to be processed.
When it’s ready, you can then share with your students by embedding it in a Canvas page or send it to colleagues via a link.
If you have any questions about editing with Echo360 or sharing video with students, please email atc-ttl@wpi.edu.