Video Editing Tips

After investing in all the necessary hardware and equipment, you need to determine the software you would wish to base your work on, they come in several versions from dedicated ones or so-called proprietary formats and general or free ones that are free for all to use. The best software might be to expensive for the home video buff so invest in a manageable piece of software that is easy to use and easy on the wallet. Decent free ones are found from the internet that even have free updates available for download on regular intervals. There might be a bit of trial and error when you begin which is okay for it familiarizes you with the capabilities of your system.

Transferring analog tapes to digital form can take some creative thinking but the best way we’ve seen to give the best output is by using the old digital camcorder. Have the lens cap on so you prevent accidental recording of footage you don’t need. If your camera won’t allow it set it in a quiet room where no one is present to mess up the process. You can also use nifty techniques like the one I used to do for capturing taped sounds, by using a couple of pillows on the bed I set up the recorder and player within cancelling most of the background noise and vibrations from the floors from getting into the recorded audio.

To make your video more appealing and professional-like write a script so you get to have a guide to use and follow as you go along. If you intend to do this as a business, you can even have storyboards done to attain that smooth flow of video your work is to follow allowing you to come up with professional work. Stick to it and avoid skipping scenes too fast to maintain the proper storyline. It makes for good video as long as you get that smooth flow of ideas.

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…

Viva is another of the many open-sourced projects that have focused on the production of free utilities for all. It is also published under a GPL license which makes it more or less free for all to use and it has most of the facilities that you would expect of the other video editing software you can buy from the store. It has a nifty ability to combine video from different sources(video cameras), and then combining them into one file for burning. It can also support multiple scenes that is combined into one single project making it quite powerful for a free software. The software however lacks a lot of power in terms of the files it supports and can export, but for most of us, the simplicity and utter lack of cost would be enough to get us on the open-source bandwagon. 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…

If you’re the type that wants to make serious movies and videos, here’s the idea rig for you to put together.

Your editing PC must have:

1. A capture card. This to capture video that is not recorded digitally into a hard disk or memory stick. You can also use this up capture videos from your old VCDs and VHS tapes.

2. A lot pf processing speed. You need at least an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 or any equivalent to handle the processing requirements smoothly.

3. At least 2gb RAM. Video editing software, especially the more advanced ones, need a lot of memory. So if you’re also using Windows Vista, you’ll be needing a lot more for smoother operation.

4. Hard disk space. A lot of it. Raw video tends to be large – some even breaching 1gb EACH, so you need space both for that and the output.

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.

Using opensourced and free video editing tools seems to be the cheapest, if not free, way of finally finishing that video. However, since there are tons of them around, we’ll focus on just on one: Kino.

The latest version was a few months ago but seems to be still relevant: ver. 1.3.2.

This is basically a re-release of 1.3.1 with some build-related fixes.

Author Dan Dennedy
Publishing date 20.08.2008 19:15

1.3.2 Release Notes
Just some build-related fixes.
1.3.1 Release Notes

* Added HuffYUV AVI export
* Added option not to recover to the crash detection dialog
* New Belarusian translation by Hleb Valoshka
* Updated Finnish and French translations
* Bug fixes

NOTE: configure’s –enable-udev-rules-dir has changed to –with-udev-rules-dir

Source