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New Year's resolution: Become a Video Guy - The online computery journal thingy of a turtle

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Jan. 1st, 2011

04:05 pm - New Year's resolution: Become a Video Guy

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Huh... after all these years of not bothering with New Year's resolutions, I've finally got a reason to make one.

I want to get into video editing! I've got hours and hours of MiniDV footage I've shot at furry cons, and I've heard people complaining that you see lots of cameras at cons, but you never see their footage. Well, I want to change that, at least in my case. I want to put the Furry Variety Shows and fursuit parades I've seen, up on YouTube. (I've even got a couple of interesting bits somewhere, like the time I saw the Klingons at Further Confusion carrying a fursuiter on a pole like he was their fresh kill!) I'd also like to make videos of my own.

I know how to edit video and audio, I've had experience with that at school way back when, but I need to work out the technical issues, of which there are two main ones:

1. Copy video from my camera to the computer.
2. Find good video editing software.

#1 shouldn't be too hard; my camera came with a manual and a CD-ROM. I shall see if I can handle that part myself. For #2, anybody got any good recommendations? I can afford to spend some money, I don't have to be yet another Unregistered HyperCam 2 user.

(13 comments | Leave a comment)

Comments:

[User Picture]
From:alfador_fox
Date:January 1st, 2011 10:57 pm (UTC)
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> Klingons at Further Confusion carrying a fursuiter on a pole like he was their fresh kill!

O_O ...was it a squirrel? If so, I think I know the guy--I haven't been to Norwescon since 2009, but there was at some point an annual event where Fractal Squirrel played prey for the Klingon Squirrel Hunt there. Even if it wasn't him at FC, it's still possible the tradition has spread!
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From:chaysefox
Date:January 1st, 2011 11:06 pm (UTC)
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For software, Depends on your budget.

For free, try Lightworks: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/11/professional-grade-lightworks-open-source-video-editor-to-be-rel/

Linux, try Cinelerra.

If you have money, could try Premiere, Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, or Sony Vegas.

If you have Windows, don't forget to look into what's built in. Like Windows Movie Maker for something to start with.

Software I use is Premiere and Pinnacle Studio.

Hope that helps.

P.S. Oh yeah, here's another list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software

Edited at 2011-01-01 11:07 pm (UTC)
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From:kinkyturtle
Date:January 1st, 2011 11:29 pm (UTC)
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Aha! I have Windows Movie Maker, and it looks like a really good place to start. Thanks!
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From:orv
Date:January 2nd, 2011 11:00 pm (UTC)
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+1 for Windows Movie Maker. Start there. You can move up to something else if you find you need to do stuff it can't handle.
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From:woelfisch
Date:January 2nd, 2011 02:00 am (UTC)
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Cinelerra is IMHO way too complicated for someone just starting with video editing and not familiar with professional broadcast video editing workflows. And it is extremely resource hungry and crashes a lot if you press the wrong keys... Lightworks is also a pro tool, which requires training or prior experience in professional movie editing. Premiere CS and Vegas are a bit easier to learn, but quite expensive. Premiere Elements is good for small projects, but I don't know if current versions are more stable than my copy of PE 6 when it comes to HD editing.

For the casual user I'd recommend Apple iMovie on a Mac or Premiere Elements. Excellent and relatively stable free software editors which don't need too many resources and quite easy to use are OpenShot and Kdenlive. Both have a very similar GUI and are developed for Linux, but Mac ports likely exist. I don't know if either has been ported to Windows already.
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From:kinkyturtle
Date:January 2nd, 2011 02:32 am (UTC)
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I forgot to mention I'm using Windows XP. But thanks for the advice; hopefully other people interested in video editing will find it useful!
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From:yakko
Date:January 6th, 2011 10:54 pm (UTC)

I'm sad that I'm flying...

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So... my idea to edit video in Linux like I can on my Mac using iMovie is just not going to be realized for awhile... (though Openshot seems to be the closest like GIMP is the closest image editor to Photoshop)

Man...
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From:tilt_longtail
Date:January 2nd, 2011 03:04 am (UTC)
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I use cyber link power director...it came with my camcorder.
www.cyberlink.com
I think they have a 30 day free trial.
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From:shockwave77598
Date:January 3rd, 2011 07:57 pm (UTC)
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They do, and they are good for entry level learning how to make videos. Good price too when you buy it.
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From:shockwave77598
Date:January 3rd, 2011 08:00 pm (UTC)
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DV isn't High def, it's standard. And when you cross to HD I recommend VideostudioX3 by Corel because it uses the graphics card to do the HD Rendering.

My i7 with a GTX460 does an hour of HD video in less than 15 minutes. My Q9650 with no GPU took 7 hours to encode that same 1 hour of HD video. When you step out of SD and into HD editing, everything you knew about encoding time and computer performance goes out the window -- it takes Monster machines to handle AVC files and make blurays out of them.
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From:shockwave77598
Date:January 3rd, 2011 07:56 pm (UTC)
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The reason for "never see their footage" is that video eats LOTS of memory and takes forever to upload, even with broadband. Plus places like Youtube have 10minute limits on the files you upload. So there's a dearth of places to put 50 minutes of con video on the web.

But for editing, that depends. You say this is DV tape -- most of those use firewire and import to the computer at 1:1 ratio meaning an hour of video takes one hour of time to transfer to the computer.

If you have a high-end machine (quad core with a GTX260 or better GPU) then a Corel program VideoStudio takes advantage of these to do format conversions FAST. Plus you can press a button and send it straight to Youtube. But if you want lots of furry con videos, you'll need a dedicated server to host them -- big files are big. Otherwise there is Director 9 (good basic editting) and even Windows Moviemaker.
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From:kinkyturtle
Date:January 3rd, 2011 10:47 pm (UTC)
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I went to Control Panel, clicked on System, and here's what it says I have:

System:
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 3

...

Computer:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU
Q8400 @ 2.66GHz
2.67 GHz, 3.37 GB of RAM
Physical Address Extension
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From:thecanuckguy
Date:January 8th, 2011 07:43 pm (UTC)
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Perhaps now you can make "video diaries" instead of "cartoon diaries"?
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