Video software for non pros

[Corey]

I dabble with Windows Movie Maker that comes with XP and Vista.
Have not used the Vista one on my laptop, I think it has some enhancements over the version that comes with XP that is on my tower I mainly use.

I enjoy making vids with it for camping stuff, documenting stuff, and recently, a seven year anniversary video for over at the forum I created and am an admin at.

Is there easy software that is pretty much WYSIWYG like Movie Maker?
And after you created a video on your desktop with it, what format can you save them in?

Movie Maker saves them in a Windows WMV file which leaves a small file size, and is very YouTube friendly which I use to host my videos with.

Here is one I whipped up Saturday morning in under an hour.
Pretty simple really.
I just saved all the submitted pics, used two MP3 files, and loaded it all into Movie Maker, saved the file at the highest setting, then uploaded it to YouTube.

But I would like to be able to do more with effects and other stuff.

Video turned out at a pretty good resolution to play full screen too and in HD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvANH9s1aKY

 

[greg mgm]

Windows Movie Maker is easy to use but limited on effects...but then again
it's free. You can buy a cheap commercial editing program for way under
$100. I've been shooting and editing video for DVD sales for a buggy club
for the last 2 years, and have found Adobe Premiere Elements to be intuitive and very easy to use. I highly recommend downloading trial versions of a
couple programs to try. What I like, you may not care for.

Youtube makes it easy to upload video, and they accept most formats. I've tried rendering my projects as Windows WMV, Quicktime, MPEG 2, H.264, and the quality isn't much different. What did make a difference was to upload in HD.

Some things come to mind after seeing your video.
Be careful uploading other peoples music. It's actually against Youtubes rules, although people do it all the time. I got warned about copyright infringement after uploading a video to Vimeo, so now I use copyright free music-

http://musicbakery.com/

It's not FREE music, but you won't get sued for using it either.

You mentioned using more effects. Use them sparingly. Overdoing it looks
cheap and cheesy. Fade in at the start, fade out at the end, and a couple
dissolves here and there, and that's it. Let your great photos and video do the work. And PLEASE don't use the stupid twirly or flip dissolves!

Learn to add motion to the still pics. But don't over do that either. Just some slight zoom in or out, or slow pans. But just here and there...

Change pics to the beat of the music. On the beat, off the beat...
change it up, make it interesting.

Re size pics before adding them to the project. Something like 1200x1040
(for example) is actually larger than you need, but gives room for zooming in.
Importing at full resolution bogs down the program...and isn't needed for
online video. Full res is for printing.

The most important thing? Have fun on your projects!

 

[Corey]

Thanks Greg.
I did not mean overboard with effects like page flips and circles after every picture (have seen that and done that in the past), but more like a zoom in/out feature of a few random pics.
I do not think Movie Maker has that option?

For the 4th year anniversary video I used a Flash app from Comcast that actually did that, and it looked pretty good.
But you can not upload the saved file to YouTube.

I will look into the Adobe one to dabble with.

On the copyright thing, I did not realize about including them in photoslide shows, as I see it so often on YouTube.

I have listed to some of the music that YouTube lets you input into your video, and most if it sucks

The two years prior for our anniversary videos, one of my moderators there mixes in both pictures and rigs 4wheeling in videos.
She does a fantastic job.

Here is some of her other work, she covers a lot of off road stuff in Colorado and Moab..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBw00oBrLY&feature=channel

 

[nwoods]

I haven't done it yet, but can't you make videos using QuickTime Pro (on a PC or Mac)?

To date, I have avoided getting into the time suck known as video, but have been thinking about getting into it more and more. Cameras like the Canon 5D mkII, or cheap vid cameras like the Flip HD are making the video concept more appealing to me.

As an alternative to making your own video creation, have you checked out stuff like Animoto? The paid version offers DVD quality, and you can slow down the effects and do a lot more. You can watch some sample videos here: http://animoto.com/photography/casestudies

 

[Scott Brady]

Buy a mac... It already has the perfect app - iMovie.

I made this clip in the middle of the jungle, on my laptop, from footage I just captured hours before: Five Blues Lake

 

[adventureduo]

We're mac based and use Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. For 'non pros' you can use iMovie like Scott mentioned above. It comes with the computer and does pretty much all you need for basic light editing. Afterwards you can burn it using iDVD. For PC... i don't have any recommendations because im out of the loop on that platform. Last time i used a PC i was using Adobe Premiere.

 

[Reata Rover]

Can you suggest a good camcorder for just normal family trips, vacations, kid sports, etc? I have always had PC's but my kid talked me into a Macbook. We messed with it this weekend, and it was awesome. Our biggest problem was that we have a camera that makes the little 3" dvd's. Macboook will not accept them so I had to wrangle the 3" disc on my PC into a semi-useable format. Then I had to get it over to the Mac on a external HD and then into iMovie. Once we were there it was a piece of cake and turned out great. Now I am considering a new camera with a flash drive and a removable media card. Apple website seems to push Canon products and reviews I have read indicate they are very compatible. Should I go HD or not? Can you suggest a specific model?

Sorry to hi-jack your thread Corey.

John

 

[greg mgm]

Hopefully Corey is OK with your question!

I've been using mini DV tape camcorders, which work great and the format is
easy to edit on PC based editing programs. Having the video on tape is good for backup. But now with flash card cameras available, that's the direction to go (in my opinion) Downloading video to your computer is fast and easy. I'm not a Mac guy, so first check what formats are compatible with imovie, then buy an appropriate camera. I can't recommend anything specific since I'm out of the flash based camera loop! But I'd more than likely buy a Canon.

I shoot everything in HD, but presently I'm not burning HD DVD's.
I'd recommend getting a HD camera though since HD burners and software prices are getting cheaper all the time.

 

[Martyn]

Can you suggest a good camcorder for just normal family trips, vacations, kid sports, etc? I have always had PC's but my kid talked me into a Macbook. We messed with it this weekend, and it was awesome. Our biggest problem was that we have a camera that makes the little 3" dvd's. Macboook will not accept them so I had to wrangle the 3" disc on my PC into a semi-useable format. Then I had to get it over to the Mac on a external HD and then into iMovie. Once we were there it was a piece of cake and turned out great. Now I am considering a new camera with a flash drive and a removable media card. Apple website seems to push Canon products and reviews I have read indicate they are very compatible. Should I go HD or not? Can you suggest a specific model?

Sorry to hi-jack your thread Corey.

John

I'm Mac based and can't sing the praises of iMovie enough. Quicktime Pro is a very distant second.

For video cameras my research is leading me toward a Canon VIXIA HF-100 AVCHD Flash Memory Camcorder which is fully Mac compatible.

 

[Reata Rover]

Thanks Martyn. That was one of the ones I was considering. How well does the anti-shake work on that model? The thing I like most about the Canon's is their easy compatibility with the Mac (I think I will be converting the hosehold over pretty soon)? The Mac we have is awesome and never seems to fail under any circumstances.

Corey, again I really apologize. I will move it now to a new thread.

 

[Corey]

No problem Reata.
I am not a Mac person, I have two PC towers I built for gaming/surfing, messing around on, and a Dell 1720 laptop for surfing while in the easy chair or out on the deck.

My Sony digital camera is the Sony H9, bought it a few summers ago.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07022705sonyh9h7.asp

Mainly just looking for apps that can take my video I shoot and pictures and turn them into a nice slideshow to share on YouTube.
YouTube would be where I host all of the videos since it is their bandwidth not mine.

Any future projects I may make too would not be going onto a DVD, just to YouTube.

 

[Corey]

Re size pics before adding them to the project. Something like 1200x1040
(for example) is actually larger than you need, but gives room for zooming in.
Importing at full resolution bogs down the program...and isn't needed for
online video. Full res is for printing.

Totally forgot this part earlier Greg.
I always post my online pics on forums at 1200x900 shrunk down from 8.1 megapixels, I use XPs Power Toy Image Resizer to shrink them, then edit them with Picasa to lighten up if needed.

I had specified in the picture submission thread for the anniversary video that pics submitted should be a minimum of 1024x768, but many had smaller ones, and also a few in portrait mode, not landscape like I prefer to use since they will fill up the screen width wise.
My own pictures I threw into the slideshow were 1200x900.

Good advice though on eliminating a lot of effects like the flips, twirls, and circles.
I only used two of them this time, one at the beginning, and one at the end.
It keeps it a lot cleaner that having effects for every picture when they change.

On the camera part discussed earlier, I have heard good things about the Flip HD camera.
Most of the use I get from a camera though is just taking pictures, and occasionally a video too, (both for just posting on forums and YouTube) and I think my present Sony H9 on high format does a fair job for what I am into.

 

[Scott Brady]

I shot all of Central America with this: Canon HD vixia hf100

We also bought the hot shoe mic (with the wind attenuator) and the Canon wide angle lens. The footage is excellent, and over six minutes of it is airing on the SPEED channel in two weeks.

We are going to be buying this JVC GY-HM100U for another project later this summer. HD, straight to FCP as .mov.

 

[bajasurf]

Flip HD Camcorder

Totally forgot this part earlier Greg.
I always post my online pics on forums at 1200x900 shrunk down from 8.1 megapixels, I use XPs Power Toy Image Resizer to shrink them, then edit them with Picasa to lighten up if needed.

I had specified in the picture submission thread for the anniversary video that pics submitted should be a minimum of 1024x768, but many had smaller ones, and also a few in portrait mode, not landscape like I prefer to use since they will fill up the screen width wise.
My own pictures I threw into the slideshow were 1200x900.

Good advice though on eliminating a lot of effects like the flips, twirls, and circles.
I only used two of them this time, one at the beginning, and one at the end.
It keeps it a lot cleaner that having effects for every picture when they change.

On the camera part discussed earlier, I have heard good things about the Flip HD camera.
Most of the use I get from a camera though is just taking pictures, and occasionally a video too, (both for just posting on forums and YouTube) and I think my present Sony H9 on high format does a fair job for what I am into.

Corey, on a whim I bought the Flip Ultra for less than $100 on Amazon. I used it during the Baja 500 on Saturday and it did a decent job. It took the harsh elements very well. Attaching a photo of the Flip mounted on a tripod just as a Trophy truck is passing by. The camcorder was soon engulfed with dirt. Notice I glued a step up ring to the Flip and then screwed on a .5 wide angle lens. A very easy to use camcorder and don´t expect your footage to be seen at Imax.