The Nokia N8 camera isn’t just great at taking still photos, it’ll shoot eye-tingling video in HD too. Follow our Nokia N8 video guide, and you’ll find yourself shooting Hollywood-grade home movies that send your friends’ jaws to the floor.
Pre-order the Nokia N8 at Vodafone
Plan your shoot
The best videos might look like they were spontaneous and shot in just a few minutes, but by putting in a bit of planning you can guarantee a professional result and a home movie that’ll put Spielberg to shame.
Grab a pen and paper and sketch your shots in a storyboard fashion. Envisage the story you’re trying to tell, and plot a start, middle and end. You can do this even if the event you’re filming with the Nokia N8 is itself un-planned. For example, a kids’ birthday party is a highly unpredictable scenario, but you’ll still be able to plan a shot of the partygoers arriving, birthday candles being blown out, party games and a closing shot of a lounge strewn with wrapping paper.
Story board those ideas, and use the N8 camera’s viewfinder to test the framing of any potentially awkward shots before you start shooting. This will remove any problems that could arise when you pick up the Nokia N8 for the all-important filming, and give you a solid base for creating your home movie masterpiece.
Shoot in sequence
The Nokia N8 camcorder is unusual, in that it lets you pause recording without creating separate clips. This is a feature usually only found on full-blown video cameras, and helps enormously when filming an event in chronological order.
By pausing in between shots, you can create a rough edit as you go. The places where you pause will create jump cuts between scenes when you play the clip back later. If you want to edit it further, those breaks could act as markers, making the process faster too.
For example, if you’ve planned your storyboard well, some sequences can be shot and edited together at the same time. Pausing the Nokia N8 video recorder between those shots rather than stopping it completely will mean you create the finished movie, even as you shoot.
Shoot with variety in mind
Whatever you video with the Nokia N8, make sure you vary the shots you use. Don’t, for instance, film all the people in your video from the front. Use a variety of shots, and edit them together later to keep a high level of interest from your viewers.
For example, if you’re filming a birthday cake with candles try filming it from above, and the side, as well as head on as its candles are snuffed.
In some circumstances, you should even film the same event several times from different angles. This will let you cut between them to give the illusion your video has been filmed with multiple cameras. Make sure this is planned carefully at the storyboarding stage though, since asking a child to blow candles out several times on their birthday might not go down too well with parents.
Important importing
The Nokia N8 video editor gives you a comprehensive cutting room in your pocket, ready to slice up clips and piece them together with aplomb. Tap into “Video Editor” within the Nokia N8 applications menu and you’ll be presented with two options.
The first offers to “easily create a video from your photos and video clips” while the second lets you “make a stylish slideshow from your photos”. Once you’ve shot a few clips, choose the first option.
You’ll see the video timeline appear, completely empty at first. Fill it by tapping the illuminated “Select media” icon in the lower left of the Nokia N8 screen. You can choose several clips at once, letting you import all your footage by tapping separate clips to mark them with a tick, before hitting the large tick icon in the lower left corner of the screen.
Edit with ease
Once your clips are imported into the N8 video editor, you can re-order them by pressing and holding them, and dragging them around. Once they’re in the right order it’s time to begin editing.
The first step is to remove any unwanted parts of your clips. Select the clip you want to edit by dragging the timeline so it’s under the ‘playhead’ – the small triangle at the top of the timeline. Now tap the “Edit” button, which looks like a film strip with a pair of scissors. You’ll see the clip in the centre of the screen, and markers showing where it begins and ends. Drag these to move them and select only the part of the clip you want to keep.
Tap the tick icon in the lower left of the screen when you’ve trimmed the clip and the Nokia N8 will discard the extra material, leaving only the clip you want left behind. Repeat this process with any clips that need trimming.
Add transitions
Once your clips are in the right order, and of the right length, you’ll want to add transitions. These include wipes, blends and other animations to move between two clips smoothly. To insert a transition, tap the plus symbol between two clips and browse the transitions on offer.
To test a transition, tap it, then press the play button. You’ll see a rough approximation of its effect, but not in full quality. Tap the tick in the bottom left corner of the screen to confirm the transition, and the Nokia N8 will be all set to render your video.
To see the finished article in full quality, hit the disk icon in the bottom left of the main N8 video editing screen. This will make the Nokia N8 save your creation, and once it has done so, begin playing it back in full quality, full screen.
Read more N8 Camcorder Guides
Nokia N8: Top 10 tricks to editing a video HD masterpiece on N8
Nokia N8: Release Hollywood-grade HD home movies from your pocket
