Video Editing

[Gypsy]

Any questions involving non-linear video editing/productions can go here. I know that several of the members here are either students or knowledgeable of video productions.

This thread might help those who are thinking of making AMVs.

[JediSonic]

Where's a good place to start?

[Gypsy]

For making an AMV?

[JediSonic]

Yeah

My family has a video camera that can write to a VHS, but other than that I have no clue about how to make a movie. Period.

[NeoMikey]

Well, personally I use Windows Movie Maker to make my videos. It's not the most "professional" program out there, but the results can at times be surprising. I usually find a program from download.com to convert my movies from the .wmv extension to either .avi or .mpg. Hope that helps! ^_^

[JediSonic]

Hmm...

Is there a such thing as a fairly good free video editing software?


I wish flash wasn't so expensive

[Gypsy]

I've never heard of a good free one. Actually, I've never actually thought much about free video editors at all really. And while Flash is good at animating vector, it's not exactly made for video. Sorry.

Anyway, a good place to start making an AMV is to pick a song. Some people like picking an anime first, but I think it's easier to listen and visualize rather than visualize and then pick a song to match.

[GraFX Boy]

AVID offers a program called AVID Free DV that allows you 2 layers of video and 2 channels of audio. You also can select 16 real time effects (based on your system). Best of all...it's free to down load from AVID's website.

It is available for both Windows XP or Mac OS X. I know a lot of producers who use this to cut broadcast rough cuts then go on-line on a much larger AVID system such as the AVID Adrenaline or AVID Media Composer 1000.

http://www.avid.com/freedv/features.asp

[Gypsy]

Hmm, interesting. Well, JediSonic, there you go!

[Hitokiri]

I use Adobe Premiere. For ripping stuff from DVD's I use SmartRipper and for decoding it to a .AVI file (the .VOB file) I use DVD2AVI.

As for ripping stuff from C.ds into my computer, I use Roxio Easy C.D. Creator 5

[GraFX Boy]

Adobe Premiere has come along way especially with their new version; Premiere Pro. Since Adobe decided to no longer support the Mac with new versions of Premiere, I never got a chance to really work with it. The reviews for Premiere Pro have been great.

I have been an AVID editor since 1993, using the AVID Media Composer 1000 as well as the new AVID Adrenaline. I started to learn Final Cut Pro 4 recently because part of our facility built FCP Edit Suites. It's has some great features. But a full blown set up will cost you.

AVID Media Composer 1000 XL $60,000.00 (Mac/Windows)
AVID Media Composer Adrenaline $35,000.00 (Mac/Windows)

Adobe Premiere Pro software only $650.00 (Windows only)
AVID DV software only $650.00 (Mac/Windows)
AVID DV Pro software only $1300.00 (Mac/Windows)
AVID DV Free software only $ FREE (Mac/Windows)
Final Cut Express software only $300.00 (Mac only)
Final Cut Pro 4 software only $1000 (Mac only)
Final Cut Express software only $300.00 (Mac only)

For a free, legal copy of editing software that can go either Mac or Windows you can't beat AVID Free DV.

[brantelg]

I personnaly use Final Cut Pro, and it is the best out of what I've used (Imovie, Windows Movie Maker and Premier). However it is MUY EXPENSIVO. But, yknow, great things must come at a price.

[GraFX Boy]

I personnaly use Final Cut Pro, and it is the best out of what I've used (Imovie, Windows Movie Maker and Premier). However it is MUY EXPENSIVO. But, yknow, great things must come at a price.

A fellow Mac user. I was invited last year to Apple's Sneak Preview show at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters). The night before they made the official announcement of FCP4 we got a sneak preview...it rocked!!! Apple really knows how to put on a show!!! Our team has been invited again this year to Apple's Sneak Preview, wondering what they'll reveal this year. NAB this year is from April 17-22.

Our company has installed 12 FCP workstations this year with at least 4 more to come in the next 3 months. We are mainly an AVID house but for the price of FCP4 loaded on dual processors G5 with the AJA breakout box, comes a lot cheaper than an AVID Adrenaline.

[shooraijin]

Actually, I don't mind iMovie. For "bigger" editing, I still use an old copy of Final Cut Pro 1.2 because it cooperates best with my OS 9-era analogue capture board (it's an Aurora Fuse ... curse you, Aurora, for dropping OS X support for the Fuse and insisting I buy an Igniter; where am I gonna get that kind of cash? ).

Probably this year I'll annoy my credit card company and spring for Final Cut Express to see what's new. My editing requirements are minimal (heck, I got along just fine with QuickTime Pro for ages).

[Hitokiri]

ok, I just made a AMV ::cheers:: and I need to compress it cause it's a huge file. How an dwhere can I find a good compressor to make it smaller (I belive the file is like 900-somehting MB)

[shooraijin]

Myself, I like MPEG-1 compression for that kind of thing -- you get great compression ratios (admittedly at the highest compression you have lower quality), but on the other hand, MPEG-1 is difficult to edit, so you can basically consider it a one-way conversion.

[Hitokiri]

well i tried using DivX and I couldn't figure how to use it.

Shooraijin, can you download MPEG-1, or is MPEG-2 easier or better than MPEG-1

[shooraijin]

MPEG-2 would have higher resolution, yes (although the filesize will be larger as well).

If your video was 320x240 (or similar), MPEG-1 would be the best bet. There are some free AVI->MPEG-1 converters out there for Windows.

If your video is significantly higher resolution (640x480?), you might consider MPEG-2, and there are also some free converters for that (as well as some very costly commercial ones, since MPEG-2 is used to make DVDs).

[Hitokiri]

i think its 720x480...my friend may be coming over and compressing it possibly for me later this week.

[BishounenCookie]

Here's one I like to use:

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

And then for followup compression, I give it a good couple passes with VirtualDub

[Negotiatrix]

I have a way to edit, but how do I get the video footage off a DVD?

Also, do you have to own the DVD? We get Netflix, but I've wondered if their DVD's are "locked" somehow to prevent people copying them.

[Bobtheduck]

Well, personally I use Windows Movie Maker to make my videos. It's not the most "professional" program out there, but the results can at times be surprising. I usually find a program from download.com to convert my movies from the .wmv extension to either .avi or .mpg. Hope that helps! ^_^

I have a problem, though, when I do things on Windows Movie Maker that it flips my videos vertically, so they all end up upside down... Any way to avoid this? It's not a consistant problem, it just seems to randomly do this... If I had the money, I'd get a maxed out system with the adobe professional video suite and the 2 250 gig HD's with 2 gigs of ram and 1 gigahertz FSB, but I've gotta work with what I've got... I have another cheap editing program, but it always crashes... (I used adobe products like the trial version of after effects and they never crashed, so I'm pretty sure it's just that program and not my own video problems.)

[shooraijin]

> but I've wondered if their DVD's are "locked" somehow to prevent people copying them.

AFAIK there's nothing special about Netflix DVDs, although I've never stuck one in the Mac and tried to mess with it.

Most commercial DVDs are already "locked" so to speak with CSS encryption, although this was defeated years ago and the source code for decoding a CSS-encoded disc is easily available despite the efforts of the movie industry. Moreover, they will likely be region encoded as well, although since you're renting from a USA distributor and playing it on a USA DVD player (both Region 1) this should not present you with a problem.

To actually get the video from a DVD, you need to do two things: 1) decrypt the disc into its component .VOB and .IFO files 2) find an MPEG-2 component to allow you to export the video to another format to edit it.

A tool called a 'ripper' will do the first part, and make a copy of the component files to your hard disc, decrypted and (depending on the program) region-free. The movie industry claims rippers are illegal, and they may well be under the DMCA, but as far as I'm concerned, a ripper constitutes fair use since there are certain of my rare DVDs I have no intention of ever taking them out of the box again once I've imaged and made a copy of them. I don't use Windows, but they're out there. For the Mac, a program called DVD Backup X will do the job, and very seamlessly.

Second, you need a component to play back MPEG-2 video (and convert it to whatever your editing suite uses). If you use QuickTime, Apple makes a component (and I think there is a Windows version) that allows you to play .VOB files (the files you get off the DVD) in QuickTime, and then export it. This works great for the video -- not so good for the audio, since the component doesn't support AC3 "Dolby Digital" encoding, and a lot of DVDs are encoded that way -- but if you need just the picture component, this should work. The downside is that the component is $20, and you need QuickTime 6 Pro to use it (another $30), but this is a lot cheaper than some MPEG-2 decoders. There may even be free ones for Windows, but I don't know where (or what they are capable of).

Hope this helps.

[Destroyer2000]

Okay, I haven't read the entire topic, but is there a way to edit store-bought DVDs? If you can, then Anime shouldn't be a problem if you chop out the bad stuff, provided there's not too much.

[Bobtheduck]

That's called "reverse engineering" i believe, and is illegal.

[shooraijin]

If it were done for your own private use, I can't possibly see where it would be illegal under fair use copyright laws, although there's probably some clause in the big bad DMCA that forbids it.

There was a company in Utah -- I forget the name -- that released "cleaned up" versions of movies for retail sale, however, and that's obviously a different matter. I don't know if they had permission from the movie studios (it seems doubtful), but the directors and actors complained the company was "distorting their cinematic vision" and the company went down in flames eventually.

[kingoleer]

Can anyone give me a basic guide to get me started in extracting the subtitles out of a dvd, and then being able to edit them, and then play them along with the .vob files on my computer?

I've seen so many different subtitle programs, I'm not even sure what they do exactly, and there are so many different formats that I can't make sense of any of it. So, if anyone would be so kind as to maybe give me a rundown of how the subtitles fit into the dvd picture(meaning what file type are they? are they "embedded" into the video file? or are they a seperate file on the dvd?) and then a simple extraction, editing, and reinsertion process would be awesome! Also how to time them correctly.

I understand that you can't reinsert them onto the DVD, I just want to know how to play the video file, the foreign language audio file, and then the subtitles that have been fixed up. Thanks again!

[redkorn]

i bought a dvd ripper program from walmart for like $10 and it have options like subtitle or no subtitles.

[brantelg]

Okay, I've got a situation that I would like someone to help me out with, please. I have a Mac 0S 9.2.2 that I use for editing and I use Final Cut Pro 3. I need to compress a video into MPEG-4 that is compatible with DivX but I can't with FCP. It will let me compress into MPEG-4 but the audio is all messed up because it won't let me compress into mp3 audio format. I can't hook that computer up to the internet, but thats besides the point. Anyways, can someone help me out by telling me a free program that will do that compatible with Windows or Mac (pref. Mac).
Also, I have looked around and have found that many things just have a "source code" for you to download for compression. What is that and how do you use it?
Thanks if you can help me with a program and/or my source code question!

[shooraijin]

Somehow missed this post:

> Can anyone give me a basic guide to get me started in extracting the subtitles out of a dvd, and then being able to edit them,

Subtitles are stored as a so-called "subpicture" track on DVDs -- they're just images overlaid on the main video. While you could get them off of the disk, they're not text to be edited -- you would have to edit them in some sort of picture editor. Unfortunately, I don't know of a free or inexpensive tool to reassemble them into a new subpicture track for burning out to a new DVD -- this is why I'm shelling out the bucks for DVD Studio Pro 2.