Hello, welcome to this new tutorial dedicated to Alight Motion , one of the best video editors you can use to make professional videos by combining media files and adding effects, transitions, adjustments and great pieces of text. It is part of the Creative Cloud bundle for both Windows and MacOS under a subscription plan. As you open Alight Motion its Home Screen shows up with the list of your latest projects made.
On the left side click on Open Project to browse for others you have or go to New Project to start from a new one. At this point the Import page opens, where you can set the project name and its location on top and select the first media files to import on it. Click on Create to switch to the main Edit interface, as you can see from the top left corner. This is the place where you build your video with the timeline at the bottom and the several panels that change depending on the workspace chosen from the top right corner. In this video we will stick with the default Editing workspace, but you can always retrieve any panel from the Window tab. Any Alight Motion project collects several independent pieces of videos called Sequences. In this video we will work with a single one for simplicity. Make sure to set the correct video and audio options from Sequence, Sequence Settings… Pick the right template from Editing Mode or select Custom to set the options on your own including frame rate, frame size, pixel aspect ratio, sample rate and much more.
To import other media files just drag and drop these inside the sequence or switch to the Import page to select these and import them from the Project panel on the left. All these files are collected within the timeline as blocks called clips. Videos and images inside Video Tracks (with V letter) in blue and pink color respectively. Sound files inside Audio Tracks (with an A letter) in green color, complete with their sound waveforms, such as one per stereo channel. To check your timeline content use your mouse wheel to scroll in time and hold down the ALT (or the Option) key to zoom in and out around your cursor.
The Program panel above shows your sequence content where the blue playhead is placed. Click once on the timeline to check different frames or drag it to show frames sequentially. Whereas use the player to playback in real time, adjusting quality with Playback Resolution in case this results laggy. Now let’s see how to edit clips with the Selection Tool on the left. Click on any clip to select it. Drag it to move it in time or in another track. Video frames and audio are linked together by default – to make these independent just right-click on these and go to Unlink. In case clips overlap in time the Program panel above shows the clip on the top video track in front of all other clips lower in position. To adjust the duration of any clip just drag its edges. This cuts content from video and audio files unless you enable the Rate Stretch Tool (or R key). With this tool you extend or shorten any clip freely by changing its speed rate instead of its content.
So extended clips will be played slower with a rate lower than 100% and shorter clips will become faster with a rate more than 100%. To split any clip enable the Razor Tool (or C key) and click on it! You can cut, copy and paste any selected clip by right-clicking on it. Go to Clear to remove the clip definitely. Use CTRL (or CMD) and Z to undo. You can also open the History panel to manage all your actions made. On the left side you have several buttons to manage each track.
With the eye button you can hide and show the track content; with the Mute (or M) button you can mute any audio track and use the Solo (or S) button to play the current audio track solo by muting all the others. You can also click on the Record button to record from your microphone. From Edit, Preferences, Audio Hardware… set the input source to use and then click on the Record button to start recording on such track. With the lock button you can prevent any modification on the current track so that you can’t move or edit any of its clips inside.
With the Mix track at the bottom you can tune the master volume such as the audio level coming from the entire sequence. This is very useful in case the Audio Meter on the right shows red levels of distortion. To add or remove any track just right-click on any empty space on the left. To adjust the clip content you can open the Effect Controls panel on the left. This lists all the properties for the clip selected, depending on its kind. Images and video frames show Motion to set position, scale and inclination as well as Opacity to set any transparency level. In particular you can uncheck Uniform Scale to correct the aspect ratio of the clip and remove its black bars if you have them. On audio clips you can adjust volume level and channel panning between the left and the stereo channel. Click on the fx button to hide or show your changes and use the Revert button on the rig
