Video Editing Tips

One of the open source programs to choose from, Ingex offers tape-less video capture using the serial data interface or you could try streaming input for real time encoding of data. It has the uncanny ability to obtain video from several sources as in a studio setting. It can also be configured to serve as a video editing server for Avid editing clients.

Using the Samba Virtual File System, it has the nice ability to use non-essential data storage for it’s libraries unlike most software commercial or free that do use up a lot of storage and memory. It’s small footprint makes it ideal for those who use Linux machines and the likes, making video on the cheap with less resources.

Opening up your options to open sourced software is very hard but considering the fact that there is a growing movement of open source users that use Unix-like languages it may be wise to get into the thick of if. Avidemux is a non-linear video editing software that allows decent visual effects in the form of filters from the developers. It can also convert video into one of the many formats it supports.

Using the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine it is user-changeable meaning it is customizable should you be a Linux geek who wishes more control on the features you get and have available to you. It was initially designed for the Unix-like platform but it can be made to run on Windows.

Blender is a free 3D graphics computer software that was released under a free GPL license. Authored by an animation studio way back in 1989, it has since evolved into a multi-platform 3D generating software. It is capable of 3D rendering and metallic material representation that results in high resolution rendering of graphics.

Many hail the software as a mid-range product compared to other more commercial software that are customized for advanced graphics generation but considering the fact that it is free, it tops them is many aspects in terms of function and capabilities. One of the advantages is that the software comes in a very small footprint, not needing specialized computers for it to perform it’s magic. You do need to meet some minimum requirements but compared to specialized software of the same caliber it works on the cheap.

Now that you’ve decided to do your editing, it would be nice to know a little of the facts so you get the overall picture in terms of Video processing and the required space you need on your hard drive. Digital Video runs at a bitrates of around 3.5 megabytes per second so your input feed requires:

2 hours * 3600seconds/hour * 3.5 megabytes per second = more or less 25 Gigabytes.

You would also need to store your final MPEG-2 files on your hard disk before you burn them onto DVD’s and DVD’s typically have a 4.5 Megabit/sec bit rate for video and 0.4 Megabits/sec which sums up to :

4.5 Mbit/sec + 0.5 Mbit/sec = 5 Mbit/sec translating to 0.625 Mbytes/sec
2*3600*0.625= 4.5 Gigabytes

So 30 Gigabytes of hard disk space is needed for editing two hours of Digital Video and the subsequent DVD burning process and that is a lot.

There are a lot of factors that have to be satisfied from which none is actually accomplished but satisfying most will result in a decent length of film. Do plan ahead for the planning allows you to get to know the area and gets you to find the best places to take shots from. It might not have anything to do with editing but it sure helps with the amount of material you need for that perfectly edited video. If you are going to film solemn moments like baptisms, weddings and other formal activities, do plan to go to the venue so you can familiarize yourself with the person who is in charge (priest, rabbi….) so you get to introduce yourself. Try to establish a rapport so you get to ask the do’s and don’ts of the ceremony. You get to show respect and are allowed to film during the event itself without getting thrown out as a nuisance.

Ask any professional videographer and they would always tell you that for a 2-hour length of processed video, they would have taken more than twice that and from all the best angles. Also, most videographer work in teams from two to more depending on the price for they allow the coverage of events from all angles, a relevant and important shot may suddenly have the subjects move in a way that the view of one camera is obscured with another to take over giving the shot continuity. You can overcome this by combining video with still shots as fill in’s to prevent gaps or jumps from scene to scene and venue to venue. There should also be a lot of shots of the background and venues well before the event for not even the celebrants get to see the in their full splendor.

Or at least try to for you have to be a developer or programmer to do this effectively and properly. One such program that can be used for free or even compiled for free is Avidemux, a French-written open source project that is offered for free for those who want a simple yet quite easy to use program to edit and put together their videos without the hefty price or huge overhead. One of the other nifty thing about the software is that it can be compiled to run in Linux, BSD, Mac, OSX and of course Windows. Read the rest…

If you want to get more oomph to your video editing work, then why not try out Lives, a linux-based open source project that is free yet powerful enough to get you on the professional way to video editing. It can be used as a video editor, a video server and more depending on the desired function you may want it to take for being open-sourced, you get to incorporate the features you need into the package, eliminating unneeded ones to save on resources. Read the rest…

Another of the free and open-sourced video editors out on the internet that has spawned many a forks as they are called, or versions made by other people and not the original author. The forks added more capabilities in terms of support and other capabilities but overall have the same look and feel. It is quite limited but for something that is free, it is quite awesome with some easy editing capabilities. You may want to get more performance by choosing from some of the forks/variants so do check at SourceForge where most open-sourced software are hosted for all to use and download. Read the rest…

One of the best proprietary video editing software around that money can buy. It offers advanced editing features that can be found on more expensive professional software. It is capable of using data from Sony’s digital recorders but a good firewire converter must be installed to allow importing of the video information. The more expensive version of the software boasts ability to format video for upload to the much famed iPod and Sony’s own PSP system. It also has a canny ability to upload video directly to YouTube which is a very good feature for social internet lovers. Designed as a non-linear editing tool for desktops with several versions that varies in capabilities according to the price. The complexity of the system has been addressed by Sony with the inclusion of many How-To videos that would allows the user to get step by step instruction in the system’s use. Sony’s software is a bit complex but overall, it is considered to be one of the best consumer editing software around.