LESSONS 3 and 4 (COMBINED): NAVIGATING, EDITING and PUBLISHING in MOVIE MAKER

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

Thx for the extra black bars Lewis!!! Gives people some choices...awesome.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

I came to the conclusion i will be needing a bit more time for these lessons.

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

I came to the conclusion i will be needing a bit more time for these lessons.

no problem!

Here are a few pearls of wisdom (or chin drool from bumbling professor...depending on your POV ):

- editing a vid is ALOT of work. I've done alot of these things, and on average, a 2 minute vid still takes me about 6 hours of work...and I have a system in place. If you are just starting out, don't feel embarrassed if it takes you many hours to get it right...its normal.
- it is normal to see your vid in draft, and then realize you need to go back and "film" another few shots. Happens to me all the time. If you get it "perfect" on your first run, then you aren't been picky and critical enough of your own work.
- filming was the fun part. Editing is a grind. You watch the same clips over and over, and until you render it, you aren't sure if it really looks any good.
- whatever awesome piece of music you are using, you will learn to hate it.

Finally, this lesson and lesson 5 bleed into each other...lesson 5 is simply the refinement of your vid, and the final submission. For this lesson, a draft is the main point...even an incomplete draft, just to demonstrate that you were able to put something into MM, edit it a bit, perform a successful render, and post it to Youtube. You have another week after June 9th to refine it and get it just right , but with advance notice, we are totally flexible on the due dates.

cheers!

Nanny

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Yeah i noticed i had to redo/take some extra shots.

[LuckyLewis]

Another thing I've noticed when making videos is that you may hate a certain scene if it lags slightly, even if it's unnoticeable to most. I find myself always apologising in videos I have made about lag, only to be told it's hardly noticeable. Well, it is to me! haha

Usually I attempt to replace the scene with a smooth one though.

[John Doe]

- filming was the fun part. Editing is a grind. You watch the same clips over and over, and until you render it, you aren't sure if it really looks any good.

WHAT!!!

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

WHAT!!!

LOL! hehe I was wondering when someone would pick up on that

[MasterBigAb]

To be honest, editing is my most favourtie part

[SPQG_Juba]

I've jsut finished a first draft. It is a teaser to the vid im working on. I couldent implement the techniques of the previous lesson, cause i only took footage ive already had. though reading all that stuff gave me some ideas. The slowmotion parts need to be redone, and already captured in slowmotion, otherwise the fps rly sucks.




Cheers


SPQG_Juba

[LuckyLewis]

Wow, that was really good SPQR_Juba, you have some very clever ideas going on there. I liked what you did with the scope, that was very smart, how did you go about doing that?

I agree that the slow-motion scenes may need little bit of work due to the FPS. Movie Maker's slow motion effect is really bad in my opinion and should never be used. However, I'd still try out Blaine's custom speed effects which give you some new options and smaller slow down rates. I'd try the lowest 25% and continue to add slower rates until the FPS hit is noticeable. The custom speed effects are very easy to install and it will even detect which version of Movie Maker you have so you won't have to deal with any of that annoying stuff we talked about in the 'how to add custom effects' section. It is a simple installer, just download and run it.

But yes, a very good video indeed, I particularly liked the intro (the first 20 seconds), that was very well done! +rep

[SPQG_Juba]

i actualy use sony vegas, so i dont know how to do the scope thingy withe the mm. but the scope was a bi****, took me half a day to figure out how to use effects and shapes. Just looked at the video again, and i guess i will redo the whole part after the scopescene.

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

Sorry, but this is a course on making vids with MovieMaker. If you chose to do you vid in Vegas, that's your choice, but support and feedback in this section is for people learning MM...to get TWC recognized credit, the final product has to be MovieMaker.

If you have questions about Vegas, I'll be happy to help off-line mate

[SPQG_Juba]

I made one video before attemting to this course and used vegas for that, so i thought it would be a waste of time to use a different program this time. But i guess vegas can do everything the mm can, so it shouldnt be a problem to addopt the stuff we do, just need to find the counterpart in vegas.

[John Doe]

I got some trouble on how to get organized with MM, I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of clip on the timeline. So is it OK to render individual or small numbers of clips, and once all done, puting all the pieces together to finalise and render the complete work. Is there a loss of quality to render 2/3 times the same video? or I can do it as long as I keep the DV_AVI format, and only apply the 1080p WMV format for the last render.

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

I got some trouble on how to get organized with MM, I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of clip on the timeline. So is it OK to render individual or small numbers of clips, and once all done, puting all the pieces together to finalise and render the complete work. Is there a loss of quality to render 2/3 times the same video? or I can do it as long as I keep the DV_AVI format, and only apply the 1080p WMV format for the last render.

Rendering into smaller sections, then collecting those sections to make 1 video, is an emergency strategy for those who are getting crashes in the final publishing...and it works. However, in MM, you don't have any rendering options that don't compress (no matter what the program says), therefore there is a noticeable loss of quality***.

Ya, the 10 minutes of clips can look overwhelming...do a 1st "quick sort", creating 3 categories, and don't worry about the chronological order: must keep, not sure yet, and doesn't cut it. After that, review your not sure yet group, and force yourself to get rid of exactly half of them.

Put them in chronological order, and now trim the ends of each clip to get rid of obvious pause screens and the like. Now your timeline looks a bit more manageable and less daunting. I find myself usually working with about a 10:1 ratio...10 minutes on the cutting floor to every 1 minute used in the final render.



***(note: even in more sophisticated editing programs like Vegas, creating an uncompressed file is very difficult...the file sizes are HUGE, and the process to keep it pure is intricate. There is a section in my Debts of Honour movie, during the sea battle scene in part 2, where I re-rendered...and when I watch it in hindsight, the decrease in quality grates my nerves )

[.Mitch.]

I've began to find out how long 2 minutes actualy is.. By the times I've chopped all of the clips I dont like and edited all the ones I do, Ive got like 10 seconds of movie..

Hehe, time to go get some more, but like you said, this is perhaps normal no? Especialy for a first timer.

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

I've began to find out how long 2 minutes actualy is.. By the times I've chopped all of the clips I dont like and edited all the ones I do, Ive got like 10 seconds of movie..

Hehe, time to go get some more, but like you said, this is perhaps normal no? Especialy for a first timer.

well, 2 minutes is the maximum length for this course...1 minute is the minimum. Usually people have hard time making it shorter, so the maximum was imposed to force people to have to be picky and selective about their clips, and to reduce the chances of render crashes in MM.

[John Doe]

So if I have two video files of the same format, I can't just attach them together, like I would just glue to bit of real film? There isn't a plain copy/paste or "attach at the end"?

[Nanny de Bodemloze]

ok, I'm assuming by video files you mean .wmv format.

You can attach them together in MovieMaker, as you can in any video editing program. Just drag and drop the file into MM, just as you would your FRAPS .avi clips. In MovieMaker, you can even edit/trim/add-effects to that .wmv file.

However, just realize, that by doing this, you will be decreasing the video quality, although not by the same degree as the first render that produced your original .wmv file. I'll outline a common scenario:

- I drop 5 .avi files produced in FRAPS into MM, each raw clip is about 300mb (totaling about 1.5gig in .avi files).
- I mess about with them, add a few effects, trim the edges etc.
- I publish/render, at the highest available quality, and successfully produce SAMPLE1.wmv
- my SAMPLE1.wmv file, I notice, is about 400mb total. WTF? well, to produce the easier-to-use-and-produce-for-youtube .wmv file, my .avi files were compressed. Alot happens in compression...file size is reduced, any audio quality is reduced, and video quality is reduced. But if I wish to do anything with my movie, I don't have a choice.
- I sit down and watch SAMPLE1 in WindowsMediaPlayer.
- I start a new MM project, drop 7 .avi files produced in FRAPS into it, AND I add my SAMPLE1.wmv to the timeline at the end.
- I publish/render, at the highest available quality, and successfully produce SAMPLE2.wmv
- I open up SAMPLE2 in WindowsMediaPlayer, sit back and watch. I notice that my first half looks ok, a slight dip from the quality of the raw FRAPs clips, but that's expected. Then I notice the 2nd half of my vid...the "re-render", and I notice a slightly further dip in quality from when I watched SAMPLE1. This is because my compressed file was compressed a bit more.

Like I stated in a previous post, this is a technique I've sometimes had to use in MM when my vids were longer (usually over 3 minutes), and I hadn't properly "split" my fraps clips on my timeline, leaving un-used video in the background to overload MM. Since the video quality is decreased, however, I'd encourage you to only re-render clips if you are absolutely stuck and your program is crashing. As much as possible, use raw, uncompressed files in your timeline (uncompressed audio files are hard to find though, so mp3 files will do).

Here are two example of vids I made in MM (a long time ago ) The first vid, was entirely re-rendered, using 4 separate .wmv files. The second one had no-rerendering, just a one-time render of the .avi files. The proof is in the smoke. Pay attention to the cannon and musket smoke in these vids. You can see a "foggy" pixelation in the first vid. That pixelation and roughness in the smoke is a dead giveaway for a re-render. Watch full screen, in 1080pHD to full see what I'm talking about.

Russia:


So now that you all have stopped laughing at my early effort (no seriously, stop laughing ), look at the second vid...also an old vid (my very first one, in fact), but I didn't re-render any clips. The resolution isn't very good, but the smoke doesn't have that same pixelation effect.

Lastly, you can watch these vids as being full examples of what NOT to do when making a MM vid. My screens have lots of HUD elements (you can even see the mouse in parts). The camera work is not smooth at all. The fps is very low, and very choppy (particularly in the 2nd vid). The second vid, a bit of an experiment since it was the first I ever made, over-uses effects and old-film techniques to the point of being cheesy. The list goes on and on

[empr guy]

I think im going to need a bit of time with this lesson, finals are coming up so school is getting a bit more intense.