Once your wedding has been filmed it will enter our editing queue. Depending upon the time of year this queue can grow large. A typical Ultimate Wedding Film will require a minimum of two weeks editing to turn the raw footage into a fully edited film. If your wedding is at the end of a busy wedding period there will be other films in the editing queue that will be edited before yours, unless you have purchased one of our priority editing queue jumps.

The Editing Process

The editing stage is where the magic really happens and is the main reason that our films tug at the heart strings in the way that they do ... each film is lovingly crafted from the many hours of footage taken on the day - which every shot and camera angle chosen to showcase your wedding to its very best.

When your film is ready for editing all of your footage will be loaded onto our main editing suite. It is quite possible for there to be more than 300 Gigabytes of footage for a single film, this is especially so if we have filmed parts of your day with five or more cameras!

Editing Stage #1: The MultiCamera Edits

For those parts of your day filmed with multiple cameras the first stage is to "line up" all of the footage from the multiple cameras - AND from up to six separate digital audio recorders. This creates an editing "timeline" with all video and audio synchronised.

In "real time" this multi-camera footage is played in a special player that allows us to watch and select the various camera angles needed to show your wedding in the best possible way.

Once this "basic edit" is done ... the timeline is then played back shot by shot making sure each camera change is at the right time - and that the best camera is selected at the right time.

Then we do some clever bits like adding effects like disolves (fading one camera in whilst another fades out), dips to black (making an "obvious" edit less intrusive) and adding subtle effects like slow digital zooms on the "wide angle camera" located at the back of your church or ceremony room, colour grading, image sharpening and brightness / contrast levels are adjusted, along with grey-scale balancing / tweaking.

But, it's not JUST the video... we will have multiple audio recordings from different places... cameras, lapel mics, room mics... and a full audio balance is performed to make sure you can hear all of the action in the very best way.

This editing stage is repeated for ALL of the parts of your day where multiple cameras were used. Preparations. Ceremony. Speeches. Evening Function / Dancing.

Editing Stage #2: The "Creating the Magic" Edit

All of the "chunks" of your special day are now "multi-cam" edited and we are left with series of long video files for each of the sections of your film - with all of the camera selection / transition information complete.

A typical wedding film will span two disks (either bluray or DVD).

The first disk will be preparations and the ceremony.

From your entire film footage we will select certain "beauty shots" which showcase you and your film in the best possible way. Using these shots and (probably) your first dance music a full Opening Titles sequence will be created. When you watch your film - pay attention to the detail - a subtle black shading overlay on the video, rendered slow motion, black and white (tinited with a sepia tone) and of course the wording, graphics and captions.

Once into your film the preparations multicam edit video will be sliced up, interspersed with additional footage, slow motion, colour effects and graphics to produce the final edit.

Clever tricks like the use of Google Earth allow a "where are we in the world" and "how do we get from point A to point B" perspective.

During your film the rest of the footage will be used - to join together the re-edited multi-camera video files. Additional music (both vocal versions and non vocal versions) will be used - switching between the vocal and non vocal tracks as and when appropriate.

The same process will be used for the remainder of your wedding film.

Editing Stage #3: Disk Master Edits

When we are happy with the final edit of your film a full master video file will be created for each disk. These are full HD.

The completed HD video files are then imported into the DVD / BLURAY editing software where interactive menus are created (using still images exported from your film) and all of the "chapter points" will be added. Each film has several key chapters highlighted on the interactive menu - but there are MANY MORE chapter points on each disk.

When you are watching your film you can simply "skip" to the next chapter - or return to the disk menu and select another point in your film.

With the disk images complete - we then burn your blu-ray masters and "downsize" the HD footage to DVD quality to produce your DVD versions.

Editing Stage #4: Online / USB Device version

From your finished HD masters we will create one video file which is your complete wedding day. This will be downsized and converted to two different formats for upload to our video library site: Video.GBCTelevision.com

It will also be converted to a format that can be stored on a USB memory stick or USB drive for playback on a Television with USB capabilities.