Movie Making Questions
 

What is some good software for a weekend worrier to make movies. Any freeware/shareware programs out there that's good for this?

What I'd like to do is take some video clips and put them all together to make one movie. Or clip parts out of one movie and insert it in another maybe longer clip. Then maybe dub in some music. I'd also like to be able to compress the whole thing to something of a reasonable size.

Weekend worrier?

I have a friend who uses his iMac for this. It seems easy enough. The corresponding Windows softwares seems clunkier and more expensive. (I think iMovie comes with the Mac.)

This from a Windows guy.

Windows XP has "movie maker" that comes with it, not sure if you can do all that you want to with it though... Premier comes to mind, but it is expensive. On the Linux side, Kino and Cinnerlara (sp?) can do it.

Check it out. BRILLIANT! iLfe alone is worth the price of a new Mac. And iLife is free with all new Mac's.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/quicktour/imovie/

Windows Movie Maker that comes with XP Pro is fine for beginners. I edited a small film with soundtrack in a few hours with it.

In case you don't know.

Start menu > All Programs> Accessories>Movie Maker

Cool! Well I just bought a new computer about 5 months ago. I'll see if it has it on there. Never thought to look.

Thanks guys!

Edit: All I want to do is make a small P-car video with a variety of video clips. Maybe dub in some music. Nothing too crazy.

Do you need some bad 70's funk music to dub in?



Oh, wait, you said a PCar movie.


Sorry, thought you were doing something else.:)

That's funny cause I was wondering if this thread was going to go south. BTW Wayne you are the one that got the ball rolling on videos and that youtube email. Then I started coming up with questions. Too many puns in that last paragraph and none were intended.

But seriously:
I do have that movie maker on my computer and already modified a video of my son playing just to mess around with the software. I even added in some tunes I thought were kinda funny. It's pretty cool so now I can't wait to shoot some video of the P-car. Next year maybe we can get together for a day and get lots of clips and put together a movie. That would be cool!

Just went out this past Saturday and shot some p-car footage. Unfortunately, I deleted the three Premiere project files I was working with last night. I recut my footage last night and have to put it back together now. :) Have fun! I plan on doing the next one in 16:9.

Dave

Hrm... maybe I should get the 356 running and do a movie iwht teh cam mounted on one of the windshield wiper arms...

You will NOT find a more ardent supporter of Microsoft. And I am pretty much a Mac hater. I work for a Microsoft partner here in Seattle. MCSE, MCT, MCDST, blah, blah, blah...

Get a Mac.

If you want your PC to do what a mac does out of the box, you will be a minimum of $200 in the hole. The movie making software that comes on all the macs is excellent. You can go from having nothing to a quality DVD in about an hour.

+1
iMovie HD blows away Movie Maker - and it's free with every new Mac (plus iDVD for authoring/burning DVD's on Macs with a SuperDrive).
Also, with a new Intel Mac you can run XP or OS X which is the best of both worlds.

To me, OS X now is what Vista will be in a few years.

I have another question for you guys out there. I have a digital camera with a CF memory card. I can download the movie and do whatever I've wanted to so far. So I dug out the camcorder. Not real old (Canon ZR45) can take crappy digital pics and movies on those mini DV tapes. How do you get those movies from that mini DV Tape on the computer? Then when I do can I clip out scenes and modify them in "MovieMaker" like I could with the movies from the memory card?

I downloaded the ZR45 manual from Canon to check out that camcorder (I remember thinking about buying that model at one time) and found out a couple of things.

First, there is a USB cable that came with your camera that will allow you to download the pics/movies that you shot on your CF card to your computer.
Then you can play around with Movie Maker (you may need to download the Storage Driver at the above link if you don't have the original CD).

Secondly, for the video that you've shot to tape, you will need a FireWire cable in order to transfer it to your computer.
On the front of your camcorder, under the lens, there is a DV port.
You'll need a 4-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable to transfer the video (it looks like this).
Get the cable, connect 'em up and you're in business.

Keep in mind that you'll need lots of hard drive space for the video you transfer - DV takes 13GB per hour of footage.

Good luck!

Thanks Drew001! That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I looked around last night and couldn't find the manual, so thanks for the links. I'll pick up that cable and see if I can get a video on the computer. My videos are short, like 5-10min. Hopefully they'll fit on DVDs so I don't have to store them on the computer cause it sounds like they take lots of space.

wcc - you will also need a firewire card for your computer. $30 or so from newegg, tigerdirect, best buy, etc.

Ok, that was going to be the next step. When I pick up cable tongiht I was going to ask about that. But thanks for the heads up!

The firewire card(mac term) is also called a 1394 in pc.
Pc magazine has some reviews at http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1874,4835,00.asp.

I once tried MovieMaker long ago, and lost some great footage because the maximum save/transfer resolution was 480x?(while ago). Then I got Pinnacle's Studio v.7 and am pretty satisfied, but some of the format transfer(i.e. QT -> Divx) isn't available.

A word of caution- I just tried to burn some stuff(web pages, pics, videos) saved from the internet using MuVee's burning function, and a WHOLE lot of "failed to work, Digital Rights Mamagement infringment" warnings popped up on some really common, public stuff.
Really annoying.

Also save as .mpeg, so the movies can be played on "other than MS" players (their EULA alows them them to scan your computer for media files-scary)

Well I bought the card and the wire last night from Staples. Hooked it up and it's all set.

So now I'm left with the quality of the video. I messed with the camera settings and read the manual (I found it) and it's set up correctly. That brings me to my next question. Is there a different way or setting you guys use to import the video from the camera. Or is there a setting I need to set when I save it as a Movie.

If I use High Quality Small the movie doesn't look too bad, but anything else the video looks grainy.

Another question is, is there a way to compress the files so they aren't as large? I know they'll be large anyways, but if I could compress them that would help a little.

I didn't clarify what kind of P-car movie I was going to make :eek: :
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1160742988.jpg

Slippery slope.

Good quality and compression are opposites. Best quality is acheived at non compressed.

The short answer is there is no ONE magic setting. You should have your master video at highest quality and if you want to put a copy on the web you compress a copy for web, you want to dump to an iPod or similar, compress a version for that etc...

Look for Sorenson Cleaner, media compression app with lots of pre-built settings to cover most needs.

Scott

Ok, that makes sense. So I'll leave the video as is and I'll look into that software to compress files for the web and emailing etc...

I guess that brings me to another question. Is it the MiniDV tape causing the lower quality? It's not bad, maybe I'm being too critical. Maybe I'll post one on youtube or something like that and you guys can tell me what you think.

Mini DV as a format is high quality. It's digital, not analog so the only way the source would be bad is if the camera itself does not have the best lens or CCD. If the camera has trouble dealing with low light situations you will get a lot of "noise" and "grain".

I used to use a Sony TRV series camera, awesome quality but not a very durable camera. Cost $1,200 six years ago and spent a lot of time in the shop for various repairs.

Dumped it and got a Panasonic for $300 for the family stuff. Color saturation, white balance and metering not as good as the Sony but it's small, works and is cheap enough that if it goes belly after warranty there is no guilt in ditching it. Plus I deal with the drawbacks in post.

Couple of things can be happening.

1) When you capture use uncompressed setting and save as your master source. Your software could be doing something funky on import/saving.

2) A lot of video editing software does not really preview in hi res mode. Or put another way what you see while working with the clip is not always a true representation of the quality. Working with a lo res preview is easier for the SW and CPU to deal with.

You see the full quality after you build and publish your project (depending on your output settings of course)

A quick read, http://www.wave-report.com/tutorials/VC.htm

Scott

I think that's it. My previous videos were nice and clear. The test videos that I've been doing have been after work in the house. Artifical light, cause it's dark outside. I'll try again this weekend outsided and see what happens.

Thanks for that link.....

You can also test indoors by pointing the camera close to a light source. I get noise in my house, as I do not have the brightest lights at night. Pointing any of my cameras towards one of the lights works well for me late at night.

Dave

Now I have a movie imported on my computer now. So now my question is what format does it need to be in to play on a DVD player? Right now it's in .wmv format. Will that work?

You need a piece of software that will encode it for DVD.

DVD players will look for an Audio_TS and Video_TS folder. Audio_TS will be empty and the Video_TS folder will contain .vob files.

Some disc burning software (Roxio Toast) will let you burn rudimentary DVD's, you drop the video in and it does the coversion. You won't get fancy chapters and transition but you'll get the basics.

If your computer came with a DVD burner it may have come with a free piece of software.

The simpler the software the better. Too many options are not a good thing in the beginning.

When you get to Single Pass and VBR options let me know. You can make a lot of coasters real easy.

Scott