Carving a Wooden Flower and the Struggles of Video Editing

For this weeks learning project I decided to carve a flower in a flower pot. It is my girlfriend’s birthday at the end of the week and I always like to buy flowers, but this way I can make them and they won’t wilt away! I found this video on YouTube under the user FARMAN OUTDOORS. There were not a whole lot of videos that I could find that were carving what I was looking for. I was deciding between using this video and one by carving is fun, but ultimately decided on this video as I had used a carving is fun video for a different project and I wanted to learn from a new source. I found this video to be a good watch, but actually learning from the video was not very easy. The video’s description says it is a step-by-step guide in carving the flower. In reality, the video is just a recording of the carve with no instruction. Besides the first 2 minutes of the video there is no commentary, no helpful tips or tricks, or explanations. Learning from the video was difficult as I was essentially mimicking the video. I was not gaining new knowledge, but rather relying on what I have learned so far to finish this carve.

While I did my project I tried to replicate some of the videos that I had seen carving on YouTube. These videos were basically one long video of the carve start to finish and it tended to be quite a long video. I know that no one wants to watch an hour long mediocre carve so I decided to make my video out of two parts. One part to explain what cuts/carves are coming up and the second part a timelapse of the work until the next step. This makes the video much shorter and entertaining to watch. I had to record multiple different sections and then compile them together to create the final product. For this I wanted to use WeVideo. This is a free online video editing app. I have never used this app before and I found certain aspects super easy to manage and some features I had lots of difficulty with. I used the app on my phone because that was the device I took the videos on. I did not have enough storage on my laptop to download all of the videos I had took…. regardless the app is the same on the laptop and phone. Combining the different videos and creating transitions in between each clip is very easy and seamless. You can see the transition options in the bottom left of the screen shot here. I found no issues with that feature. After I had compiled all of the videos in the order that I wanted, I tried to use the narrate feature.

This is a voiceover feature where you can record your own audio over top of the existing one. This is super useful as its an easy way to explain certain things and in general get what ever message across. That being said this is where I ran into most of my issues while using this app. I am unsure whether I was doing something wrong, but I have used enough similar apps to be confident in my ability to figure it out. After I recorded commentary over top of the video, upon playback I noticed that the second half cut out. Instead I tried recording shorter audio clips and that way If I had issues It would be an easier fix. Then after playback 2 out of the 10 audio clips I did had worked. The other 8 cut out in the middle of the recording. It took me a good couple of hours to fix this issue to the point where I was satisfied and it was working. The voiceover tool is helpful, but with the technical difficulties that I had it ended up being more frustrating than useful. I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel which I will link later in this post. As you watch you will notice that some of the audio is still cutting out!! I have no clue as to why because the video and audio were working before I downloaded it, so please excuse the random cutouts. You can still see all of the carving I did! Another issue I had with the app is that a lot of features are blocked behind a paywall. This is super common nowadays, but still it hurts. When I went to download the video I was only offered to save in 480p as I was using the free version. If I wanted to upgrade to the premium version, for at least 90 dollars a year, only then could I download it in a higher resolution. In Regards to the SAMR model I can see how these tools and apps can enhance the learning experience. The creation of the video along with the ability to narrate over and write text over enhances a students experience. To begin, the online format makes it more accessible for students if they cannot be in class for whatever reasons. Next, the ability to create audio over top or text over any video gives more accessibility for those that might be visually or audibly impaired. That being said I feel that with all of this new technology it is incredibly easy to reach the substitution and augmentation levels of the SAMR model.

And the moment you’ve all been waiting for…my final product! I am pleased with how this one turned out especially because I found myself relying on my own skill and knowledge. It shows me that I have really learned something over these past weeks! The video is grainy as you can tell and that is because I was only allowed to download the video in 480p as explained earlier. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!!