Today video editing can be done easily by anyone, anywhere and anytime. But did it cross your mind how tools like editing apps and softwares came into existence? So hold tight, let’s run the timeline of video making and editing.
1878: The bet on horse’s legs – $25000 bet was running amidst the crowd to confirm a debatable question – are all the four legs of a galloping horse up in the air? What do you think? Let’s break the suspense. Horses, as a matter of fact, are air dwellers for a mini second or so! Of course when they are galloping. Money motivated invention or in the case of Eadweard Muybridge, it led to the birth of moving pictures. Muybridge, a well-known photographer of the old days, ran several experiments to click only one shot of the legs in the air. He had his set up done and had the poor horse and horseman galloping multiple times for months. Keeping the shutter speed high and limiting the exposure he ran endless experiments, which resulted in twelve images. In this sequence of images, there was one image that proved the horse’s legs are up in the air at the same time while running. Not only did he win $25000 but also made the invention of moving pictures.
The late 1800s: The illusion of motion – Following Muybridge’s ideology, the film camera was invented. It worked by running an array of negatives through the exposure. Hence creating the motion pictures or the illusion of motion. It was seen that there was an unnecessary continuity in the motion pictures. For example, a boy takes seven minutes to move from position A to position B. The video captured would be 7 minutes long or more than it. George Méliès, a French illusionist, addressed this issue. Instead of recording in chronological order, a movie can be cut & stitched together. To edit a video, Méliès suggested physically cutting the negatives of various scenes and stitching them together logically.
1924: Iwan Serrurier in 1924 raised the idea of building the first editing machine called Moviola. This machine came in handy to trim and edit the unnecessary scenes from a video. Surprisingly, Moviola was originally used as a home projector. That later could have been sold to the general public. Even today, this machine is being used in Hollywood.
Today it is easy, just search “video cutter” and you land on so many apps and tools that help with editing and trimming videos. One of such is MontagePro. It focuses on bringing an easy video editing app experience. It really is a very simple user interface. Just record a video and send it through the internal editing tools and viola! It’s all ready for you.
It’s amazing how the evolution of a video editor jumped from that uncanny experiment to smart editing tools. The curiosity of a horse in the air brought innovation in video making and editing.
