Vid. editing question

ummbikes · Dec 19, 2004

As lame as many people say it is, Windows Movie Maker isn't half bad for someone who is new to video editing. I really have more questions for you than answers.

So are you atempting to produce a video for sale?

What type of computer do you have, lots of RAM, P4, good video card?

How much time do have to make the video?

Do you have several thousand dollars to spend on hiring some of the production out?

How are you at editing sound?

Has your source tape been blackened?

Do you know why that is important?

Video production is fun but very time and money consuming. That said I have seen some very slick looking homemade videos produced by a few people here on RM who pure amatuers.

manimal · Dec 19, 2004

i use windows movie maker 2 for my stuff, too cheap to pay for something and most of my stuff turns out ok for what it is. if i were making something for mass distribution i'd probably use premiere though.

ummbikes · Dec 20, 2004

stoner_303 said:
well, lets see.....

im final goal is to make a vid. for the y-riders race team in boulder, co. we're gonna have several kids(ya, we're all like 16). pobably enough vids to give to people on the team, and possibly future sponsors.....

what type of computer. well, its a dell. i just had a new hard drive put in it...i think...to tell u the truth, i have no idea what kind of video card ect. i have. i wish i did. the other thing is, that there will be several people working on the vid at a time, and it'd be nice to be able to all have the same program, or be able to import other vid files from different programs or DVDs.

i will have some time to edit it....during the summer especially.

well, money IS an issue. but im sure we could all (being the race team) pitch in for a program and download it onto several comps(im not sure if thats legal.....) prob. not THOUSANDS of dollars, maybe a couple hundred.

editing sound, never really tried, ive used adobe premiere a lot, and changed the sound volume(im not sure i'd call that 'editing sound')

i have no idea what the last question is, and i dont really know why ALL the questions are inportont (like "have u edited sound")

i use adobe premiere now, but im not sure im using it LEGALY, and i feel bad about it and want to buy my own program....

The blackened tape lays down time code, which the editing program uses to keep track of the video and audio. This is less of a problem in a non-linear editing program like Premiere.

I asked the questions I did because they were all areas that kicked my butt big time when I had to make a video for a college film program I was in. Also, I'm a small step above rank noob in the world of video, and by asking a few questions of you, I can see if I may be of any help at all. Or in other words, a real pro isn't likely to have the time to explain it all, and you may know more than me, so I was checking things out. Some people who have major skills can't or will not share info, for what ever reason. I had to figure this crap out solo...

The projects I did were a 10 min documentary, and 20 min documentary. I ended up doing all the editing, audio and video in Premeire with so-so results. The hardest part was synching audio recorded from an inpendent source, like tape or a digital recorder. If I had blackened my source tape, and connected my audio recorder to camera I was using things would have gone smoother, so if you are going to need better audio than what the camera mike will pick up, make sure that you have 100% certainty that your setup will synch up in editing. My screw up cost me an easy 20 hours of hell. I finally got it all good, except for a little hiss I could never completely eliminate. I'm told that a good audio guy could have eliminated the hiss, but a. I didn't know anyone who knew how to do it, and b. real audio engineers get payed bank.

The computer...

I have a 2.0 GHz P4, a Sony Vaio. It had all the jacks I needed to hook up the camera to my computer (mainly firewire), the video looked good in the store, and I thought 256mb of RAM was good enough so I bought it.

What it turns out I needed was about 750mb more RAM, a real AGP video card, not onboard video and a much bigger HD than my 40gig. Uncompressed video is massive, compiling title screens, transitions and very basic graphics on my video took about 2 hours, that is when my computer didn't blue screen on me about an hour and a half into the process. That and everything was looked a little bit red on the burned copies of the movie because my video card sucked and wasn't sending an accurate reproduction to my monitor...

I would recomend getting a good book, I used Adobe Premeire for Dummies, don't bother with it.

Besides that heck dude, go for it, it was a blast. If you have some time to work out the bugs I'm sure you'll learn a lot by doing it.

BigMike · Dec 20, 2004

Premire is the way to go on a PC. I :love: it

DHS · Dec 20, 2004

yea premiere is the choice.

i do all my editing on my mac though....

RAM is a very important item.(i have 2gigs on my pc) also if you're recording several hours onto the computer DV quality you'll need a big harddrive.
i bought a helmet cam this year, i have about 5hours of footage on my comp and it takes up ALOT of space(200gigs

the part where all your buddies will be editing it too, not gonna happen. just edit on one computer. it'll make it a whole lot easier, plus you may loose sound/vid transfering from one to the other.

Cheers.
Steve

Echo · Dec 20, 2004

You can do okay with Windows Movie Maker, if you are creative it has a lot of options. It definintely has nowhere near the features of Adobe Premier though.

As far as the computer, you will need a FAST one, and you will need Firewire, both to get the video to the computer from the camera and also possibly to get the completed video back to a DVD burner.

For creating a DVD you will need additional software, I use Nero. Again there is probably better stuff out there but it works. You can do animated menus and all that stuff.

I would recommend you try Windows Movie Maker first, since it's free with Windows XP. Then after you get the hang of things, decide if you need to spend the bucks on something better.

snowskilz · Dec 20, 2004

buy an emac for 1000.00 then get final cut express for 299. (80gig hdrive a fair amount of ram internal dvd burner)
Youd be set with that
but then again thats 1300.00 out of your pocket

MtnBikerChk · Dec 20, 2004

Echo said:
You can do okay with Windows Movie Maker, if you are creative it has a lot of options. It definintely has nowhere near the features of Adobe Premier though.

As far as the computer, you will need a FAST one, and you will need Firewire, both to get the video to the computer from the camera and also possibly to get the completed video back to a DVD burner.

Premiere is $$$$. I bought Pinnacle Studio a few years back. It's pretty good. And it comes with a firewire card.

Echo · Dec 20, 2004

MtnBikerChk said:
Premiere is $$$$. I bought Pinnacle Studio a few years back. It's pretty good. And it comes with a firewire card.

Actually I originally bought the exact same thing, but I couldn't get their Firewire card to work with Win2K. So I bought a PCMCIA card for my laptop which has XP. I would have liked to give that Pinnacle Studio a try though, it looked nice.

luken8r · Dec 20, 2004

ive demoed both premire and pinnacle and i thought they were both way too hard to get into. i torrente'd myself a copy of vegas video (latest version whatever it is) from sony and thought it was really powerful and much easeir to use that either of the above. you can import stills, put in some nice transitions, cut and paste whatever videos you need, and a whole mess of other crap. theres even an DVD plugin you can get to put a title screen in and burn it out to a DVD for TV play. I made a slick video of my wedding/ensuing cruise that was a riot. took me about 5 months...maybe 100 hrs of work time to get a 30 minute movie off of about 6 hrs of tape

Clark Kent · Dec 20, 2004

ummbikes said:
Has your source tape been blackened?

Do you know why that is important?

QUOTE]

Black that tape BEFORE it become yur source tape!

Always make sure ya PACK and black!

Software wise, Pinnacle is good stuff. They have a much firmer footing in the pro venue as well, and that is always good. Customer service wise, Pinnacle seems to be really trying hard to keep the customer happy. I am not sure about the consumer grade products, but, at the pro level the pinnacle non-linear packages have a vastly better cg, which can really make or break a production that is going to have any of it included. Just lay off the canned transitions for all of our sakes!

Chutney · Dec 21, 2004

Hey Ross,

If you want help with premiere, I have made several movies with it and would be glad to assist you with it or else throw down some trials riding for the vid. This is Jonathan (ex-Yrider), btw.

Ill be around Boulder for the next month or so. PM me and Ill give ya my phone number.

Jonathan

Gunner · Dec 22, 2004

I had used Premiere 6.0 for a few years, and about 7 months ago I upgraded to Premiere Pro and i must say i love it! Learning Premiere with no prior editing experience is not an easy task, its not a "user friendly" program by any means, but with some patience and some tips from an experienced user, you can pick it up pretty fast. I was self taught in the Premiere, so it took me a good 6 months to make somewhat decent videos, and after a few years of editing they are finally shaping up into something im proud of

.

as far as Movie Maker, id maybe start with that, but once you progress in editing, you will find that its lack of power/capabilities is going to hold you back.

oh yeah, even though im "pro" Premiere, im switching to the dark side and getting a Dual 1.8Ghz PowerMAC G5 after christmas :devil: Final Cut Pro here i come!

Search

Vid. editing question

stoner_303

Chimp

ummbikes

Don't mess with the Santas

stoner_303

Chimp

manimal

Ociffer Tackleberry

ummbikes

Don't mess with the Santas

BigMike

BrokenbikeMike

DHS

Friendly Neighborhood Pool Boy

Echo

crooked smile

snowskilz

xblue attacked piggy won

MtnBikerChk

Squeaky Wheel

Echo

crooked smile

luken8r

Monkey

Clark Kent

Monkey

stoner_303

Chimp

Chutney

Monkey

Gunner

Monkey