DR 21 beginner videos by "byte size guide" (Phil).
Thinking of the overall "story", he divides it into chapters. He thinks of 3 chapters and then the game is to divide the big timeline into 3 separate timelines, one for each "chapter"
There are + and - buttons above the Timeline that zoom in and out. Also a dot between them that does something related to that.
He goes to the media pool and clicks on empty area to get a menu, then creates two new timlines, naming them Afternoon timeline and Evening timeline. These are empty timelines. Once we do this, they get entered into a menu at the top where we can select which of the 3 timelines is "current". He moves the playhead to the transition from one timeline to the next, then uses the mouse to select all the cuts to the right of the playhead. Then he uses "cut", switches via the top menu to the target timeline and then pastes all those cuts there.
To rename a timeline, go to the media pool, click on the timeline name so that it looks selected, then type in a new name.
To put the timelines back together is easy, you just find timelines 2 and 3 in the media pool and drag them onto the main timeline.
He plans to add narration via voice-overs as well as titles.
He selects "Effects" (next to the media pool tab) and selects "dissolve" -- "cross disolve" and drags it to a boundary on the time line. There is a big arsenal of effects. But he is getting ahead of himself and will deal with this in detail in a subsequent video.
The clip menu has an entry "Clip color" you can use to color a clip (thus making a marker out of it). He does a Copy then Paste insert to duplicate a clip to a later part of the video. Then he right clicks and selects "Change clip speed" from the menu. This has an option (via a checkbox) to "reverse speed", he clicks this then clicks on "Change". This makes the copied clip play in reverse.
The space bar is a keyboard shortcut to stop and start video play.
Also, he highlights (selects) a clip, selects video, the uses zoom. Click on the 1.000 zoom value then mouse right/left to change the value. Clicking on the word "Zoom" seems to restore the 1.000 value.
He inserts a gap, then stretches the edge of a neighboring cut into the gap. This works because he previously deleted the end of that cut.
He has a long segment where he is walking down a road. One method is to make one or several deletions -- which is an improvement. Another method is to speed it up. Use Ctrl-B to make an isolated cut of what we want to speed up, then right click on the selected cut and use "Change clip speed" -- this should bring up a dialog.
I have some bug where the dialog appears for only a second then goes away. Typing R brings up the dialog and it stays up, so this is good. You do need to press "Change" after changing the speed. And the sound goes crazy, so you need to deal with that. One easy thing is to grab the center of the sound graph and pull it down to reduce the volume. He suggests "stealing" ambient sound from some other cut.
An alternate way to change speed is to use the Inspector.
To change sound volume, you can "grab" the middle line of the sound graph and then pull up or down to increase or decrease the volume for the clip.
To use the same transtion between a bunch of consecutive clips, hold down Ctrl and then click on each clip to select it. Then right click on the transition to get a menu and select "add to selected edit points" on the bottom. Note that you can choose "set as standard transition" here.
Transitions require some deleted (hidden) material at the transition point. If two clips are just butted together, it won't let you place a transition there. DR calls this hidden overlap "handles". If you use Ctrl-A to select all clips, then select "add to selected edit points" from the transition menu, it will warn you, but offer to trim clips for you. This of course sacrifices a second at the end of each clip (the default duration of a transition is 1 second). This is a perfect time-saver.
Transitions can be selected and deleted. Then a different transition (or none at all) can be chosen. It is good to check all transitions, especially if you automated a large number, and see if they look right.
Find a tiny microphone icon on the upper left of the timeline. Click on it, and a "Record voiceover" dialog pops up. This dialog has a "meter" that had better be fluctuating if you are going to continue past this point.
If you do "record track, auto" it will generate a new audio track,
named "Audio 2" starting at the location of the play head.
If you select a specific track (like Audio 1) it will record over
what is already on that track, starting at the play head location.
This is not a good idea if you want to retain ambient sounds.
At the top right of the dialog are 3 dots that give a menu of options. The top entry is "input monitoring", which lets you listen to what you are recording. If you activate this without headphones, you will just get nasty feedback on your speakers.
You can disable the 3 second countdown here. You can also mute the timeline audio, which is a good idea if you are using speakers to avoid weird echos.
Note that Ctrl-Z can be used to get rid of a botched audio track!
Presuming you have chosen to use "auto" and record a second track alongside the first, you can grab the middle of the track and adjust levels. Both tracks are being mixed when you do things like this.
If you create Audio 2, then get rid of all the contents, there is a menu you can get on the left to "delete empty tracks"
Now for the advanced method. We go to the "cut" page where there is a voiceover icon also. Why do we have both cut and edit? Cut is for quick and dirty (fast and rough) cuts and tight deadlines. They say it works especially well with the speed editor. It is less flexible and has well chosen defaults. As an example, a smart insert will target a boundary without the need to carefully place the playhead. Given all this, it seems odd that the voiceover in "cut" is more "advanced".
You find the tiny microphone icon and click on it. A "bar" opens above it. Left to right, the first thing is "settings". It will by default record a separate audio track, labeling it "Voiceover" (VO). You can specify a location to record the voiceover in a file (as a backup).
The next icon is a "teleprompter" menu to display text files. You can specify the time given to scroll through the entire text. The cut page handles the timeline quite differently than edit. You get an overall view of the entire timeline, and you can move the playhead here. Below it is a magnified view of the timeline and the playhead there stays fixed. You can mark in and out points to indicate to the teleprompter what time span it should scroll your text through.
In the center are Cue, Record, and Stop buttons. Cue moves the playhead back to the start of the region you marked for the voiceover.
Voice isolation is only available in the paid version. It automates supression of the ambient sound to ensure that the voiceover is clear. Likewise "dialog leveling" ensures that voiceover levels are not startlingly louder than the rest of the track. Stereo fixer (also on the far right) is something else to play with.
Back to the edit page -- he watches the entire video and places markers where he wants to add voiceovers Above the timeline are two blue icons (but you can change their color, so that may not be true). These are flags and markers. Clicking on this places a marker at the playhead position. Flags pertain to a whole clip, markers pinpoint a specific time. Flags therefore can be on things in the media pool. He marks the begin and end of segments, then uses a text editor to write the dialog for that section.
The markers get automatically numbered, so the first is "Marker 1" and so forth. You can hover over a marker and see the name.
You can select a voiceover clip and move it independently of the other video and sound tracks.
Ctrl-F is a toggle to take you in and out of full screen.
Typing space bar will stop and start play.
Go to "Effects". There is a "Titles" section with a multitude of choices. He uses "Simple Box 2 lines lower left" and drags it to the timeline. Drop it above the current video track. If you drop it on the current video track, it gets inserted or it replaces part of a cut. When it is above the track, it gets "mixed in" so you see it on top of the video. This creates a new track that we can rename "titles". This sort of thing can be used to "overlay" other sorts of video.
A "pop up" asking people to subscribe can be handled in the same sort of way using a "mixed in" video track.
To change the text, select the titles cut we just added, and then open the "inspector". It provides places to type in the two titles, along with a variety of options. We can change the font, size, color -- and you can see the result as you hover over different options. "Main Tracking" is the space between letters. There is a separate set of controls for the background and lines. We can control alpha for the background to control opacity.
We can move the titles using controls in the Inspector, as well as change its size via zoom in the inspector. But there is a better way. At the bottom left of the preview window is a tiny drop down menu that has "transform" as one option. This allows you to move the title around with the mouse and/or zoom it in size by pulling on corner or edge points.
The location and duration of the title can be adjusted using the mouse. Moving it is easy. You can hover over the left or right edge until it shows you it is ready to be adjusted, then move that edge. The default duration is 5 seconds.
He saves the title as a "template" using the inspector. He pulls down "File" at the top right of the inspector, then types a name. This name appears on the video on the timeline. Then he creates a new bin "Titles" in the media pool, and drags the title from the timeline to that folder. Now that the title is in the media pool, we can drag it to our timeline as many times and places as we like. It will retain any styling, though we might change text. Or it could just be a "reminder".
Now he has a video (a link to a website), that he inserts at a certain place on the timeline. He pulls it from the media pool, then inserts it into the main video track. Then he pulls it up onto a track of its own, leaving a gap below on the main track. There is also audio that came with this, which gets popped to its own track when he does the pull up. He renames the "B Roll" for some reason.
Next he injects a map (also ready and waiting in the media pool). He pulls it in (a PNG file), also placing it into the B Roll track. He does not make a gap for it. So it displays on top of the main timeline video. It should be possible to change the duration, as well as to zoom it smaller and/or move it.
At another location he inserts a video (mp4) and several images (jpg) of a waterfall that he took with a different camera outside the train. He uses "insert gap" (3 times for 21 seconds). Then he places these one after the other on the "B Roll" track.
Something new! He grabs the upper right corner of a clip (a bit fiddly to do) and drags it left to make the clip fade out.
He likes the background music from the video, and wants to propogate it to the still images. He clicks "Index" (up next to "Effects".) Then goes to "Tracks" and for the main sound track he clicks "M". M stands for Mute, S stands for Solo. Then he copies the sound track, duplicating it for the still images. You don't need Index for this, S and M are available to the left of each sound track on the timeline.
The same trick with upper corners works here to fade the sound in and out (use the upper left for a fade in).
He adds a "bonus video" to the end of the video he has already worked up. Before that video plays, he has a gap. In effects -- titles there is "text" and he drags that onto the B roll. As usual, the inspector is used to set the text. A bit of gap (black video) actually works well before and after. Fading it in and out also works well.
What is up with "B-roll". This is editing lingo. The main video is the A-roll. The B-roll is supplementary footage.
He also modifies/generates a special "subscribe" cut to add in and places it in the media pool. He does this off camera. A search on this yields lots of material. He add this to yet another track, but first he locks all the other tracks to avoid any chance of modifying them by accident. He uses a transform to make it smaller and to change its position. He uses copy and paste to duplicate it to several other places along the video. He thinks every 12-15 minutes is about right. All of this stays in its own track.
He says he has a "fusion skills" video where he shows how to use DR Fusion to make this popup. Here it is:
Another source is in youtube itself. Go to youtube studio and at the bottom left you should see "audio library", which has lots of license free music that has been vetted by youtube. A few of these my require an attribution code. He puts things from here into a folder he calls "Studio music". You can mark things you like by clicking on the star. There are also sound effects.
Now to DR and how to use these. He has 8 music tracks. He goes to the Media page and creates a new bin for music. He drags these in from some external filesystem display on his OS. These are all .mp3 files. Those with (L) in the filename have some licensing requirement (an attribution).
Back to the edit page. He uses "Add Track" from a menu to add a new audio track, making sure it is a stereo track. He goes to index and locks all tracks except the music track. There are 8 songs now in the media pool. His aim is to use music in between voice-overs. Shrinking the whole timeline makes it easier to see gaps. The plan is to start the music at the first gap of interest, then slice it at the end of the gap and push it to the next gap. Ctrl-B does the cut, then the right fragment can get dragged by the mouse. Then he adds a fade-in/fade-out to each fragment. Any unwanted end fragment can just be deleted.
He decides the music track is too loud. He goes to the Fairlight page. He selects "sound library". He then highlights the music track. The "mixer" on the right has each audio track side by side. The mixer has a gain slider to adjust the level as you listen to it. He also bumps up the volume here for the entire voiceover track.
I often ask "why call it fairlight". Apparently this was the name of a well regarded digital audio workstation that was purchased by BMD in 2016. It was designed especially for movie scores. Likewise "Fusion" was the name of a package for 3D compositing used by movie makers that got purchases by BMD. Fairlight goes back even further to the 1970s as the name of a popular synthesizer (the Fairlight CMI). Now you know.
The game here is to make any last minute corrections, then to use the delivery page to export an mp4 file, then uploading that to Youtube.
Do a final viewing of the video and look for things. His first concern is his inclusion of information about the railroad trip in Norway. He doesn't want people to think he is sponsored or shamelessly promoting them. He unlocks the "subscribe" track, and drags a text box from effects. The text simply says "not a sponsored video". He uses the inspector and the transform tool to make adjustments. He fades the text in and out.
Next he wants to replace the subscribe pop-up. He used Fusion to make the new one and replaced his image in the pop-up. The trick is finding an easy way to replace all of them without undue repetition. He goes to the media pool, finds the original thing he used, right clicks on it and there is an entry "replace selected clip". This launches a file browser that he uses to select the new clip.
Next he wants to reduce volume for a stretch of voiceover that for some reason is louder than the rest. He selects 4 clips he wants to adjust, then right clicks and selects "new compound clip" and gives it a name. This joins the four selected clips into one that he can now adjust. There is also an entry "decompose in place" that takes them back apart. He uses this because there are other clips he wants to add along with the original 4.
Next he wants to reduce volume for his music track. He zooms out so he can see more of the timeline all at once and then uses the mouse to select several chunks of the music track. The same method as the above using a compound clip.
Now we go to the delivery page. We give it a filename. Check the file location.
He uses MP4, H.264 codec. He changed native to auto. Then he selects a 4K export
(3840x2160 Ultra HD) He chooses Rate Control "Quality", and quality "Best".
Then he clicks "add to render queue". A box appears at the upper right to
tell us about "Job 1" that will render this when we click "render all" in this box.
The rendering takes over an hour! (1 hour 17 minutes). We are done now with DR.
Now to the channel "Phil and Sarah Have Retired" on youtube in a browser. At the very top right is a thing that launched youtube studio. Each youtube channel has a public facing front end and a private back end. Near the top right is an up pointing arrow that is the upload video icon.
The video is 121G -- it is 4K and 50 fps. We browse to find the video file. The upload will take quite a while. The viewer will be able to choose SD or 4K. We type in a description for the video, as well as the title. Never select "made for children". We should provide a thumbnail (more later). All this can be filled out while the upload progresses. We can add tags, indicate the recording date, He does not allow remixing (other people can use this to advertise your channel). Be sure comments are on. You can have an end screen to direct people to the next video. He lets this point to the tutorial set. The data is Aug 6, 2026.
After the video upload finishes, he uploads the thumbnail and clicks save. He sets visibility as Private, but schedules it to go public at a given time and date.
Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org