Workshops
The CDA offers introductory workshops on video and sound software. Throughout the workshops specific software is demonstrated but the accent is always on principles that can be applied to similar software.
Online Workshops
The following workshops are available in Moodle for all students in the Faculty of Fine Arts:
- Adobe Auditon Sound Editing and Mixing
- Adobe Premiere Video Editing
- Video Color Correction
- Video Compression.
Look for them in your Moodle dashboard. They will appear with a CDA logo. The workshops take three hours to complete but on Moodle you may learn at your own pace asynchronously.
If you are a Fine Arts student but do not see the workshops in Moodle, or if you are a Fine Arts faculty or staff member, please email Phil Hawes so that you can be manually enrolled in the workshops. Faculty and staff must be manually enrolled.
NEW: Other workshops are also now available to all Fine Arts students through Moodle. This includes "Introduction to QLab". QLab is a MacOS software for designing and playing back sound, video, light, and show control cues for any live performance. This workshop is made available by Concordia's Theatre Department.
In-Person Workshops in Classes
Fine Arts faculty can request to have these workshops (or variations of them) conducted in-person in their classes. The workshops are generally two hours long. Please contact Phil Hawes to arrange the details. Video camera workshops are also available.
Workshop descriptions
No prior experience with video editing is necessary. Setting up a Premiere video project is covered in detail. There is a demonstration Premiere project to work on.
Includes: hard drives for video, file organization, project settings, importing media, creating a sequence, relinking media, editing controls, editing in the sequence, audio editing, speed effects, applying effects, opacity and motion effects, titles, export options, synchronizing audio from an external recorder, captions and subtitles
If you do not have a good grasp of video resolutions, frame rates, scanning types and other basic video terminology then you should look at the first three parts of the CDA Video Compression workshop on Moodle before starting this workshop. In these Premiere editing tutorials I assume that you know this terminology. In the final part of this Premiere workshop, common export options, you need to have completed the entire CDA Video Compression workshop to understand the choices.
After Effects is Adobe's video compositing software that is designed to work with layers of video and other graphical elements. Like Photoshop, After Effects is very rich in features but following this brief workshop you should be comfortable enough to open the application and start exploring certain essential tools for video effects: working with layers, keyframing, mattes, chroma keying, speed adjustments, animated text, 3D layers, animation tools. This is a hands-on workshop with a demonstration project to work on. New features in CC 2019 will be discussed.
Includes: dynamic link, composition settings, workspace bit depth, workspace configurations, keyframing, speed changes, working with layers, parenting, expressions, multi-point mattes, tracking objects, keylight, text tools, 3D layers, render queue.
As an introduction to colour correction, the workshop shows how to evaluate a video using video scopes common to any video colour correction software. The workshop then goes into the details of contrast, primary and secondary color correction using Adobe Premiere's Lumetri effect. Although the controls described are somewhat specific to Adobe, the overall approach is pertinent to any video software.
Prior knowledge of Adobe Premiere is helpful to complete this workshop but not necessary. The Color Compression and Luminance Sampling sections of the CDA Video Compression moodle workshop are useful supplements to the brief theory introduction to this workshop.
Once again, there is a demonstration project to work on.
Inlcudes: colour theory, video scopes, contrast adjustments, primary colour correction, secondary colour correction, secondary tracking, LOG correction, tone and time of day, keyframing, balancing a scene
Audition is a multi-track audio editing, mixing and recording software included in the Adobe CC Suite. Some common uses of this software include: recording and editing podcasts or interviews, editing and mixing audio for video projects exported from Premiere, and recording and mixing music. This is an introductory workshop but some parts are more advanced than others. Although the details of this workshop are about Audition, much of the information is applicable to other audio applications.
Note that Adobe Audition is not software for music creation with software instruments. There are no instrument tracks where you can edit MIDI information.
There is a demonstration project to work on.
Includes: audio terminology, hardware settings, waveform editor, noise gates, limiters and expanders, noise reduction, multi-track editing, applying effects to the multitrack session, editing effects to an animated video, exporting a sequence from Premiere to Audition, recording
Digital Cinema Packages are the standard for cinematic distribution and for film festival screenings. The process of making DCPs is available to everyone and can be done for the cost of the drive that the DCP is shipped on. This video defines a DCP and shows how to make a DCP with DaVinci Resolve Studio.
This workshop is a general introduction to video and digital terminology. In other CDA workshops you will learn specific video, audio and graphics software through video tutorials but this workshop provides an overview of a rapidly changing and exciting medium.
Includes:resolution, frame rates, image scanning and shutter, colour bit depth and colour sampling, luminance sampling: Linear vs LOG, bandwidth, codecs and containers
