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View Full Version : I'm making a n00b combo video...


InfiniteGXT
03-18-2006, 10:01 PM
Im still not sure if Ill put it on smashboards because people here are more hardcore and whatnot but Im having some issues with making it.

First off, I made the experiamental version a week ago. Its experimental because I was just testing out the transition effects, music comptability, timing, and approximate MB size. Im using Window Movie Maker which sucks. The problems are that I have seen other people make videos with Windows MM and their transitions seem different from mine.

When they use fade to transition fromone clip to the next it only takes about .25 seconds to transition but you can still see that it faded. When I use fade it fades out too soon while there is still action going on. I know that to fix that I just need to make the end of the clip longer so it wont fade while I am still attacking or whatever but it takes about 1 second to stop fading. It will start to fade into the still picture from the next clip mixed with a still picture from the last clip and then start the next clip instead of just fading quickly into the next one.

Next I have issues with the opening/credits of the video. For the closing it gives you very few choices for what you want to do. You get a blue background and a couple faunts and effects and thats it. But when you look at other videos that were mad in WMM like lavagolems Maquess of Pharae he didnt have any of that. He had a picture with the FE characters in the background and credits on it which I have no idea how he did. And for openings from videos like The Chemists, Silent Assasin he had the character selecting on one side and the pening credits on the other side which I still dont know how to do. I want my openings and closings to be like masterwumpus' openings and closing (even though I dont think he uses WMM)

And by far the biggest problem I have is with Compression. I dont know how. masterwumpus' videos are only around 7-8 MB and are 2 times longer than my video which isnt highest quality yet it has 3 times less MB. I downloaded the evaluation version of that windows compresser thng which did nothing and I am not about to spend $39.99 buying the whole thing since I dont even know if I need it. There has to be a way that all of these people made their videos have way less MB than me. Also Since I only have about 18 choices for video format (different screen sizes and KB)

Video for local playback
High quality video
Video for pocket PC
Video for LAN
Video for Broadband
Video for dial-up acces
Video for ISDN
DV-AVI

and I dont even know what they do except for High quality Small and large I figure it must have alot to do with the MB count since when I saved the video on High quality small it was only 1 MB but very tiny on the screen. Currently Im using high quality Large ab the MB is about 30. I want to have the same quality as masterwumpus or one of those other combo vid makers. Something that could fix all of this quickly is if someone told me of another video editing program that is free and downloadable. But I dont think there are too many of thse out there. Thanks in advance for any tips given.

InfiniteGXT
03-20-2006, 08:21 PM
Why does this thread have 32 veiws already and no posts. You could at least say that you poped in to see it rather than just ignoring me.

Liger
03-20-2006, 08:49 PM
Hmm... Well some of those viewers, myself included, don't know how to solve your problems so instead of posting, "Sorry, I can't help you," and wasting space, we move on. I guess I looked at this topic since it sounded interesting. Anyhow, just wait out a little longer. I'm sure someone can help you out. As far as I've seen, this part of the videos forum isn't as active as the others.

But for compression, I think you can use a program called Vitual Dub Mod. I've used it before for video compression and since it turned a 27 gig video into a 500 meg one, I think it's pretty good. I think you need to download certain codecs in order for it to be able to read certain files and then compress. Dvix and Xvid are good codecs in my opinion. Here's a link to download Vitual Dub Mod: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=65889&package_id=63653&release_id=352709
Once you download everything you need, open the file in VDM, hit ctrl + P or go to "video" in the tool bar and go down to compression from there. Chose a method of compression by whichever codec and click OK. Then go to save as. At the bottom of your window should be your compression settings. After that, just save the Video and the compression will start.

I hope this is some of the help you wanted. Good luck with your project!

masterwumpus
03-21-2006, 01:14 AM
Well, I can tell you how I did the credits, because I did use WMM. I used powerpoint slides. I make the powerpoint slides in powerpoint (duh) and save them as jpegs. Then you can use them in WMM.

As far as fade transitions go, the best and easiest way to do them is to simply drag the clips on the timeline. If you drag one clip a little onto the one before it, it makes it fade for the duration of the overlap. Play around with what seems like a good transition time, I usually use between .4 and .5 seconds.

If you are using WMM, compressing is easy. When you save the file as an actual video file, it asks you how big you want it to be. It starts with a default size, but you can change it quite a bit to suite your needs. Most of my videos are actually closer to 40 or 50 MBs.

Finally, don't worry if people aren't responding to your topic right away. This board moves a little slow. If you need quick answers, you are probably better off PMing or IMing somebody. If you have any more questions for me, just send me a PM, I will respond as soon as I can.

Good luck!

KyUuKyUu
03-21-2006, 02:12 AM
The transitions - in WMM you can just drag the length of the transitions on the Timeline view, can't you? Just make them shorter (I'm not sure if you drag them or do what masterwumpus said =P)

The credits - it doesn't need to be just a blue screen with white text... you can click "Change Text Font/Color" and edit the background colour, font style, text size, etc.
For The Chemist's movie, what he did was use the Credits Effect "Video Left" as the opening. Then he put the character selection clip in there. Very easy to do.

Everything else has pretty much been answered. GL with the vid.

edit: Oh, and for the "Video Left" thing, you have to drag the Credits clip into the Title Overlay section in the Timeline view, just to make that clear ;)

InfiniteGXT
03-21-2006, 03:28 AM
Now thats more like it! Thanks alot. I said that specifically to atract peoples attention. This helps alot.