Review and Edit Recordings in Personal Capture for Windows

In this section:

Overview

The Personal Capture program contains some basic review and editing capabilities for captured recordings, including:

  • Review the recording, including the review of edits before applying them permanently.
  • Trim the beginning and end of the recording ("top and tail")
  • Cut segments out of the recording as needed.

Capture review and editing are performed through the Editing Window described below.

Please note the following about editing and Auto-Publish:

  • Logically, captures that are Auto-Published cannot be edited in Personal Capture first; they are automatically published to the ESS as soon as recording ends.
  • You can, however, /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217387 if necessary.
  • Or you can edit the locally saved version of the recording, and /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217621, replacing the original, if appropriate.

If your institution has integrated Lecture Tools with EchoSystem, you can also /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217411, to provide students with pre-class exercises, such as polls or quizzes. Student responses can then be discussed in class.

Long Recordings Take Time to Load for Editing

If you are editing a very long recording (multiple hours), it may take up to several minutes for the capture to fully load in the Editing Window. You will see the capture in the window, along with the editing tools, and you can make temporary cuts or trim the recording as needed. However, you may notice that the Apply edits button reads Loading... instead. This will continue until the entire capture is loaded for editing.

Access the Editing Window

Review and edit of a Personal Capture recording are both performed in the Editing Window. To open the editing window, hover your mouse over the recording and click the Edit button, as shown in the below figure.

The Edit Window appears, as shown in the below figure. The figure also identifies the main editing window features, which are discussed in more detail in the later sections on this page.

Review the Recording

Use the playback controls to play the recording. If you have made cuts in the recording, the playback will skip the cut areas, so you can see how the edits affect the final product.

The figure below shows the playback controls and has the current location of the playhead identified, both as the timed location and within the playback bar itself.

It can be useful to note the timed location of the playhead when the recording gets to a point you need to edit, either as a cut or to trim the beginning or end of the recording. Jotting down the timed location can help you move the trim sliders or cut marks more quickly and accurately, to make edits.

When the playhead gets to a cut location (identified as the lighter area in the playback bar), the playhead will skip over the cut in the bar, and the timed location will change in conjunction with the skip.

Trim the Recording

Also referred to as "top and tail", the editing window allows you to cut off the beginning and ending of the recording as needed.  For example, you may begin recording then have to start over again. With the Trim capability, you don't have to stop and create a new recording. You can simply begin again while the current session is running, and then trim the "false start" from the beginning of the capture when finished.

This also allows you to remove any last keystrokes or other movements used to end the recording, such as opening the Personal Capture window and clicking Stop to end the session. This too can be trimmed from the final capture.

The figure above has the trim sliders circled. Notice they are located at the beginning and end of the playback bar.

  • Click and drag the trim sliders to move them.

Notice that as you drag the sliders toward the center of the playback bar, the start time and end time change in conjunction with the new start or end points of the recording.

  • When finished, click Apply edits to permanently apply these changes to the recording. This cannot be undone!

Cut Segments From the Recording

When you first open the Edit window, you see a larger triangle positioned at the beginning of the recording. If you click the triangle and slide it, you will notice that it is made up of two smaller triangles. These are cut markers and are used to identify the beginning and end points of a section to cut from the recording.

NOTE: Any cuts you make are temporary until you select to Apply edits. This is discussed in more detail below.

To temporarily cut a segment from the recording:

  1. Click and drag the two smaller triangles to the appropriate beginning and end points of a segment.
  2. Click Make cut, located at the bottom right of the window.

The below figure shows the two parts of this process.

Once the cut is made, the segment turns darker than the original playback bar.

Clicking Make cut frees up the cut markers to make another cut in the recording. The figure below shows a playback bar with multiple temporary cuts made.

As long as the cuts remain temporary, you can remove the cut and return that section of the recording to its original state.

To remove a temporary cut:

  • Double-click the cut segment in the playback bar.

When a cut is removed, the segment returns to the same color as the rest of the playback bar.

To clear all temporary cuts:

  • Click Clear Cuts, located on the bottom left side of the window.

Use the playback controls to review your edited recording. The playback head will skip over any cuts you have made so you can see how the recording will look when it is published.

To permanently apply changes:

  • Click Apply edits, located in the bottom right corner of the window, as identified in the above figure.

Clicking Apply edits makes your changes permanent. This cannot be undone! You will receive a warning message to be sure you want to apply your changes to the recording.

In the list of your recordings at the bottom of the Preview Window, those that have been edited are marked as Edited. This allows you to quickly determine which recordings may still require edits before publishing.