EDITING YOUR VIDEOS

[Algenon5]

EDITING YOUR VIDEOS

Have you ever wanted a kill scene to be longer? Do you have videos with distracting elements in scenes you wish weren't there? Do you own videos in which the continuity doesn't make any sense? Well, you can have it your way by becoming a video editor with a free program like Windows Movie Maker.

Is video editing difficult? Does it require special skills? The answer to both questions is no. If you know how to drag and drop you can edit videos, and have a lot of fun in the process.

Windows Movie Maker comes with most versions of XP, Vista, and Windows 7. So chances are it's already on your programs list. If not it's available as a free download from Microsoft. Much as I hate praising Microsoft, this program works well, is easy to use and has all the features and functions an amateur editor is likely to want. These include audio track editing and special effects like scene dissolves, subtitling and title card making. There are built-in tutorials which make it easy to get started. The accepted video formats are WMV, AVI and DIVX. (The finished edits are WMVs regardless of the inputted format type.)

HOW IT WORKS: When you copy a video onto the Windows Movie Maker, it automatically splits it into dozens of small clips. Drag and drop the clips you want onto the timeline in whichever order you want. Once there they can be manually split and trimmed if needed. FX like dissolves are added by dragging and dropping them onto the timeline. There are refinements you will learn along the way, but as far as the basic editing process goes, that's all there is to it.

As and example, I extracted the money shots in a whacko vacuum strangling scene from the Japanese super heroine flick, "White Eye Hell." (caps attached) These were only 39 seconds long, but by repeating and recombining them, and adding in brief unrelated clips from other parts of the original video, I was able to come up with a more or less convincing 7 minute scene. (This was a rush job, so some of the split matches aren't perfect.) Again using Windows Movie Maker, I reduced the 105MB file to 33MB for faster downloading. The slight reduction in image quality this caused is all-but unnoticeable.

The finished edit is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?7tihgu4al65ogrj

IMPORTANT NOTE: All the bits and pieces used from the original video only totaled 58 seconds in length. This is less than 1% of the original's runtime. Therefore posting this edit is not a copyright violation.

Al

[TtfnJohn]

If you can afford them (always the issue) Final Cut Pro and Premier Pro can handle operations such as the one that Algernon5 describes with ease and, occasionally, more precision.

The problem is the learning curve for each of them. If you only want to edit the occasional clip to get rid of minor annoying things then they're clearly overkill. On the other hand if you want or need to correct glaring errors or merge/flash cut or otherwise play then they're ideal. Even better when used with After Effects (also both expensive and somewhat difficult to use) they can correct what you just may consider to be crummy effects work in the videos. That part may take time.

They also don't like compressed video formats such as.wmv and much prefer .mov, RAW and .avi to work with. So you'll need a converter.

On the other end of the scale you'll find LiVES (not available for Windows yet), VideoLAN's VLMC and, another one that requires that you work but can be extremely powerful if you want to add effects -- Blender.

LiVES is here for just about any OS but Windows: http://lives.sourceforge.net/index.php
VLMC is here: http://www.videolan.org/vlmc/
Blender (for the strong of heart) is here: http://www.blender.org/

Remember that the more powerful and capable a non-linear video editor is the more tempting it will be to say "oh, I can do this and make it even better now!" and try to do too much all at once. Keep your eye on the ball and what you originally fired up the editor for. Do that first and have something you can be happy with before the nearly endless experimenting that you'll want to do.

And while I'm the furthest thing there is from a "copyright forever and a day" purist please don't redistribute the works you've edited of those who work so hard to provide us with the videos we love so much. If you're proud of it zip it off and send it to the producers with a note and who knows they will probably be thankful and grateful that you did.

It's a small percentage margin business and you won't believe how hard the producers work to bring them to us. Not to mention the models. In short, don't. They won't be able to be here long if you do, what with governments in places like England, credit card companies that waggle their fingers at what we consume and PayPal's outright censorship it's not easy to make money doing this.

[Algenon5]

And while I'm the furthest thing there is from a "copyright forever and a day" purist please don't redistribute the works you've edited of those who work so hard to provide us with the videos we love so much. If you're proud of it zip it off and send it to the producers with a note and who knows they will probably be thankful and grateful that you did.

It's a small percentage margin business and you won't believe how hard the producers work to bring them to us. Not to mention the models. In short, don't. They won't be able to be here long if you do, what with governments in places like England, credit card companies that waggle their fingers at what we consume and PayPal's outright censorship it's not easy to make money doing this.

I completely agree with these statements. Remember, reediting copyrighted
videos must only be done for your private enjoyment. Posting them on FF or
any reputable board would most likely result in your permanent banishment.

As further examples of what can be done with the free Windows Movie Maker,
here are FF links to a Raven Alexis video tribute, a Suzi video tribute and an
experimental PKF/Dirty Deeds trailer:

http://www.femmefatalities.com/phpBB3/v ... f=6&t=5807

http://www.femmefatalities.com/phpBB3/v ... f=6&t=5686

http://www.femmefatalities.com/phpBB3/v ... f=6&t=5013

Al

[TtfnJohn]

One other advantage to returning it to the copyright holder/producer is that they may decide to let it go in public with a less restrictive license as a promotion. Thing is that these people are often running break even operations and while I know they appreciate their fan base and those who care enough to do creative edits with low end tools like Windows Movie Maker all way up to things like Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro it's still theirs.

They do appreciate the work you put into it. And the different views you awaken for them.

So edit away. Just give back to the folks that made it for us and let them decide what to do from there.