Adobe Premiere CS3
Clip Notes has been available with Abobe Premiere since CS3. I saw it demo’d when CS3 was launched 2 years ago but haven’t got around to trying it out till now. There are plenty of possibilities for using it in education.
In short, Premiere allows you to render a movie to Quicktime or Windows Media and embed it in a pdf. When you share the pdf it allows you to play the video and add annotations at specific points in the movie. Many users can add comments so you can build up a converstation about a particular video clip.
Have a look at this example I’ve put together using a video I produced for one of our schools last year.
Click to open Clip Notes
You can download Adobe Reader here.
The comments sometimes zip past quickly but use the goto buttons and pause to catch them.
The main purpose of the tool is so that video producers can get a client’s approval on a cut of a video prior to final production but it would work equally well in an education setting. What about:
- Media – students can get detailed feedback from a teacher on their assembly, rough and final cuts before they hand the work in. Also good for digital video projects in ICT.
- PE – students can film a phase of play (in rugby for example) and then analyse patterns, outcomes and choices players could have made.
- History – download a clip from an archive site and then ask students to comment on aspects of the film.
- Science – film a reaction or process maybe using time-lapse or super slo-mo and get students to comment on what is happening.
- And so on…
It does require someone in school to have access to Premiere CS3 or 4; not cheap so it isn’t a universally accessible option (look for en educational supplieras there is a discount). Also, it’s not easy to use this online so it requires cumbersome saving and exporting on the school network.
Nevertheless, as Adobe Reader is free and already has a wide user-base it makes it a useful tool for education.
NOTE TO SELF: Include instructions on how to make it, fool!
- In Premiere, make sure the correct sequence is highlighted in the timeline
- Click on File – Export – Clip Notes
- Use the following screen to change the compression settings (QT or WMV, screen size, frame rate etc) click OK.
- Choose a location for the file
- Click Save
A further point is to make sure that you’re not running another pdf reader. Only Adobe Reader has the video codecs embedded in it (as far as I know). See my reply to Catherine’s comment below.
6 Comments until now
I can open the PDF, but get a black screen instead of the video, and none of the buttons work either. Might just be me, but any ideas welcome!
What pdf reader does your browser use? You can only open these types of pdf with Adobe Reader as it’s the only one with the right video codecs embedded in it.
Make sure you’ve got the latest Adobe Reader then try right clicking, save it to a folder and then “open with” Reader. Let me know if this works.
BTW – Good luck today!
Ok, opened it in Adobe Reader and the video now plays, but can’t see the comments, apart from in the drop down menu at the bottom. How should they display?
They should show in the box as you run through the video. I had to wait a while the first time I tried it for it to load up fully.
Try playing it once, stopping and then playing from the beginning.
Have you downloaded it or are you running it in the browser? Might work quicker run from your system.
Hmm. I seem to be recommending some doozies at the moment! Good to get the feedback documented.
I have been using Clip Notes for a while now and have found that on first open it can often be blank. Simply close it then re-open the pdf file again and it should work fine, ‘the second time rule’. A bit annoying especially for sending instructions on this to clients but works for me.
Thanks for that, Rob.
It’ll be interesting to see where Adobe go with this now. When Clip Notes was released with CS3 it did feel a little like a trial for something but Adobe seem to be pushing the multi-media elements of PDF publishing a bit more now.
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