I was VERY VERY impressed at some of the cool effects he could apply to his own home videos ...
Yeah, it's a sweet app. :-) One of my favourite settings is the "Charlie Chaplin" preset - it speeds up the video by about 25%, adds sepia and noise filters, and you end up with a video that looks like it's straight out of the 1920's.
Funny you mention that one... that was one of the effects we tried out. Loved it!! I believe it even added some subtle vibrations in addition to the noise effects... it really looked authentic!!
This sounds like fun; thanks for the suggestion. Following the discussion that's gone on here, I definitely see a place for something like this. I've edited digital video for a couple of years now and I've put the time into learning Studio, then Premiere. I also take great pride in planning, shooting and then editing something for myself, my friends or family. But sometimes, I just have some 'stuff' that I shot with no real purpose in mind other than that I had the camera and something neat happened. I wouldn't mind letting a program like this grab some of that and see what it can do. Sometimes you don't want to spend days editing up video into something more significant even if you can.
I also take great pride in planning, shooting and then editing something for myself, my friends or family. But sometimes, I just have some 'stuff' that I shot with no real purpose in mind other than that I had the camera and something neat happened. I wouldn't mind letting a program like this grab some of that and see what it can do.
That's *exactly* how I feel about this program Rob - it's just another tool on your belt, appropriate for certain situations. Sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a nail gun.
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So, Jason - this software sounds perfect for the 200+ MiniDV tapes stashed away in my closet over the past three years. However, unlike Rob just wrote, I have never planned a shot, and I'm scared that I have three years of video footage of poor camera work.
Does your book talk at all about how to shoot video? If not (which I understand), then what resources would you recommend for teaching me how to shoot video (mostly of family events or just day-to-day life with a 3 month old, 3 year old, and 10 year old) so it isn't *completely* mind-numbing without muvee AutoProducer?
So, Jason - this software sounds perfect for the 200+ MiniDV tapes stashed away in my closet over the past three years. However, unlike Rob just wrote, I have never planned a shot, and I'm scared that I have three years of video footage of poor camera work.
muvee will make it look better than you ever thought possible - trust me. ;-)
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Originally Posted by bblock
Does your book talk at all about how to shoot video? If not (which I understand), then what resources would you recommend for teaching me how to shoot video (mostly of family events or just day-to-day life with a 3 month old, 3 year old, and 10 year old) so it isn't *completely* mind-numbing without muvee AutoProducer?
Yes, chapter four has seven pages on "how" to shoot video. It's not something I'd say I'm a hard-core expert at, but I think it's helpful to pretty much anyone. :-) You can check out the table of contents to get a better idea of what's in the book.
Look at interior decorating - when someone decorates their home, have they created everything in it? Do they hand-craft the furniture, paint the wall hangings, and crop down the tree for the hardwood floor? No, probably not. But when you enter into a home that is well decorated, do you insult your host by claiming that because they didn't make everything themselves they are not creative?
Good lord, man, next you're going to tell me that you don't make your own water! (It's very simple: two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen.)
Heh. I knew my post would draw out the video editing purists... :lol: Intellectual snobbery in any form is always fun to poke at! :wink:
You didn't poke fun at my intellectual snobbery.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
FWIW, you can retain the original audio track and not add music, so it's not just "music video making software". I suggest you try it.
FWIW, I have tried it.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
If software only has one button, you're right, there's no creativity involved. But as soon as there are two of more options, there's creativity. When I use muvee, I typically do 5-10 passes, selecting different templates, different music, and different lengths. muvee will often come up with a completely different edit based on 90 seconds vs. 80 seconds. I feel very much that the end product is something that I had input into, and I can feel proud of my work. Not the same type of craftsmanship pride that comes from manually editing a video, but I still feel it's an outlet for my creativity.
I'm not impugning your ability to press a few buttons. The way I see muvee is this: it won't make boring video interesting, and it could very well make interesting video trite (Chaplinesque, let's say) or worse -- it could cut it out altogether.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
The wedding video I mentioned was edited into a 60 minute version manually as well, complete with titles, transitions, and everything else you feel is necessary to achieve "true editing".
"True editing" is not the addition of titles and transitions. It's the art of sewing disparate and/or discontinuous video streams together into a flowing whole. It's the eye for good lighting, for subtly interesting scenes, for telling or poignant dialogue. And it's more than the sum of its clips -- something a piece of software will never understand.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
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Originally Posted by ptolemyx
Why would someone want to make a video worthy of VH1, anyway? Whatever happened to originality?
Why? Because it's cool, that's why! It's thrilling to see a series of memories turned into something exciting, dynamic, and professional looking. I've been editing video for several years, and I can honestly say that none of my work is as good as what muvee can produce. 8O That's a hard admission, but it's true - muvee has been programmed with the intelligence of people who are much better at editing video than I am.
It's still software that tries to make "creative" decisions -- with predictable results. It's a novelty now but in a year or two it will be no less common and no more appreciated than the oil painting effect applied to every poor digital image taken last year.
I disagree, by the way, that anything on VH1 (or MTV, or Much) is exciting, dynamic or professional-looking. Much of it appears to have been run through some big machine, an enormous hackneyed gewgaw full of flashing lights and solar flares, gold chains and wind machines. Or a computer.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Not everyone is an artist. Not everyone has the creative flair to make art from nothing. Not everyone has the weeks of time it takes to learn how to use Premier properly, then the hours of time it takes to edit the video. Most video sits unedited on the original tapes, because the task of video editing is so daunting.
I agree that not everybody has the time and inclination (not to mention cash) to set up and learn professional video-editing software. I also believe there is a reason most video sits unwatched on its original tapes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Look at interior decorating - when someone decorates their home, have they created everything in it? Do they hand-craft the furniture, paint the wall hangings, and crop down the tree for the hardwood floor? No, probably not. But when you enter into a home that is well decorated, do you insult your host by claiming that because they didn't make everything themselves they are not creative?
A false analogy. The choice of furnishings, paint, wallpaper, flooring, cabinetry, appliances, art, knick-knacks et cetera is made by the home-owner, not the home-owner's computer.
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
muvee is not the end-all and be-all of video editing. I'm not suggesting that it's appropriate for all circumstances, but for 80% of the people out there with old footage sitting on a tape, muvee is a wonderful solution that will encourage them to archive those memories on DVD or VCD with minimal effort.
Then their memories will sit unwatched on the DVD rack instead.
This is pretty darn cool program (and a good thread as well). I dinked around with it last night and was VERY impressed. I was using pre-edited video, so I didn't really see it do any magic on raw footage. Tonight I'm going to try some linear unedited video and really see it work.
There was mention before about not being able to ensure a certain scene was included. There is a workaround. Plop the whole video sequence into another edting program. Crop out all but that scene. Save as new movie. In Muvee, add both the full-length video as well as the new clip (you can add a large number of video files to the Select Video dialog).
My only complaint about Muvee is the lack of WMV support. Most, if not all, of my clips are in this format. In order to get them into Muvee to play with, I have to convert them to AVI or MPG. Pain in the butt, and takes a LONG time. It may be that Muvee doesn't have the rights to the WMA decoder or some such thing, but man, would that make life easier.
Linear Mode
