02 February 2007

Free Video Editing Software for Producing Movies & Vlogs

Ferrari fan, Prabhu Krishnamurthy, is on a hunt for some free movie making software. He writes:
We are coming up with a 12 minute movie for culturals. Do you know any good movie making software, that can be downloaded for free?

Our movie will be based on a news channel. So I am looking at a video editor/movie maker software that allows scrolling texts, subtitles and custom animations etc.
You want so many video editing features for free ? Well, it may be possible as here are some good options for editing that don't cost a dime.

But before you read this list, check the CDs that shipped with your handycam - most camera manufacturers like Sony, Canon and Panasonic generally provide a decent video editing software with the camera. OK, back to the list of free video editing software:

Windows Movie Maker - The best video editing tool for Windows that's absolutely free and chances are you already have it installed on your computer as part of XP SP2. Microsoft Movie Maker has all the basic video editing tools plus a good collection of transitions and video effects.

There's an in-built movie titler that lets add you styles to text titles including ticker taps, zoom and even the scroll effect. And if you are feeling lazy, just hit the AutoMovie command to have the entire video produced for you with intervention.

Avid Free DV - Avid Free DV, poor cousin of Avid Xpress Pro, has all the basic video and audio editing features and allow you to put video in two tracks simultaneously. They have an extensive collection of tutorials online to help you get started quickly.

Support both Mac OS and Windows XP platform. Infact, you can even play with keyframes for generating custom moves and transitions. Ships with the Avid Title tool.

JahShaka - An open source video editing software that is currently in Alpha stage but has features found only in expensive video editing software suites.

Works on Mac, Linux and Windows. The interface might take some time for you to get started otherwise the software is definitely the most powerful one out there. And the price is just right. $0. Also does 3D effects which you won't find in other free video editors.

Jumpcut.com - Jumpcut is a web based video editing software and now it's even part of the Yahoo! family. You upload a video or small clips just like importing inside a desktop software.

There are dozens of transitions and special effects. You can import photographs from your Flickr or Facebook account to mix them with the videos. The jumpcut editor is intuitive enough and there is good title support as well. And your movies are published online automatically. Perfect for quick vlogging and video podcasting.

Finally... While the above video editing software should satisfy the needs of most home movie makers, you can probably consider Adobe Premiere Elements or even Muvee AutoProducer for more features and better control over the final output. They have trial version to help you try out the software before actually buying it.

Extract Still Photographs from Wedding DVD Videos for Printing

extract photo from dvd video
There are tons of software for creating a slideshow DVD movie of your photographs but DI reader Pedro Almeida from Lisbon has a reverse requirement. He wants to extract still pictures from his Wedding video DVD for printing.

The professional wedding photographer who produced the photo DVD has the source images but he's probably charging lot of money for the service. Pedro writes:
The Wedding DVD was sold to me by a photographer and has cost me a great deal of money.

One of the DVD menu choices is to view all the wedding photos as a slideshow presentation. The photographer will take an additional charge of 3,5 euros for printing each photo.

Can we split this DVD photos presentation into separate image files like GIF or JPG. Then I will be able to print the photos myself and it would just cost me 0,5 euros each photo!!
Pedro, there are two solutions to your problem as explained here:

Solution A: - Play the DVD movie inside a media player and capture the scenes (or video frames) that you would like to print. A word of caution - normal screen capture commands like Print Screen won't work with capturing DVD videos and all you will get is a blank screen.

Read our previous guide on on how to screen capture scenes from DVD movies.

Solution B: - The second solution involves ripping the slideshow DVD into AVI or WMV files and then using a video extractor software to convert that ripped video into still photographs.

Use a DVD backup software like DVDx to convert your Wedding DVD vob files into AVI format. Then download AVCutty to extract picture frames from this AVI video.

AVCutty is smart and can automatically detect the scene changes in video files. Open the extracted photographs in an software like Picasa and select the ones that you like to print. Burn them onto a CD from Picasa and just walk into your nearest photo printing shop.

And yes, all the software mentioned above are absolutely free. The quality of extracted images may not match that of original pictures but they would still be good enough.

Create Audio CD Music Videos hosted on You tube

Music Videos on Youtube
You just finished watching a bunch of some excellent music videos on Youtube that you wish to save as MP3 files for listening on the iPod or ever better, burn them to an Audio CD [minus the video].

DI Reader Erica Gardner knows how to download videos from Youtube or Google Video but she would love to see a much-simpler solution to make Audio CDs of her favorite Indie rock bands from Youtube.

The popular solution is to download the Youtube video using sites like KeepVid as FLV files and then convert these FLV files to MP3 audio using SUPER, a free encoding software.

But that's a two step process and might even confuse some not-so-geeky users.

Therefore, another elegant solution is vixy.net - you just type in the address of the Youtube video page and vixy will convert that video file into a .MP3 file containing just the audio. No encoding required.

Now pop in the blank CD and hit the Burn button or start iTunes to transfer the Mp3 to your iPod.

You tube User below the radar linked to Nick Denton's Gawker

Some may label this as a fight between the old media [CNet] and the rising new media represented by Gawker which also owns popular web properties like FleshBot, Valleywag and Gizmodo.



A Youtube user (alias belowtheradar) has posted atleast 60 copyright videos (from NBC, ABC, Apple, etc) on Youtube that show pre-roll ads for Gawker properties such as Valleywag and Gizmodo. And lot of these video clips have already hit the Youtube popularity charts.

The Gawker media ads appear before the actual video clip or sometimes as overlay graphics during the entire duration of the video.

CNet, who's sort playing the role of an investigator here, has tried contacting representatives from Gawker, including owner Nick Denton for an official comment but there's no confirmation whether belowtheradar is associated with Gawker Media or just a fan of the blog network.

The fact that links user belowtheradar with Gawker is that some of these videos with embedded advertising have actually been displayed on Gawker blogs. And the videos were posted on Youtube the same day they appeared on Gawker sites further hinting the association.

This story is likely to gather lot of steam in the coming days for lot of reasons. Gawker is a rising force and old king CNet is feeling the heat. CNet has also posted an image gallery of some unauthorized Gawker Ads on Youtube videos.

It will be interesting to read Nick Denton's take on the whole episode.

Has Your FeedBurner RSS Subscriber Count Gone Down ? Do Not Worry

You are a happy owner of some blog that has 1500 RSS subscribers as reported by the Feedburner Chicklet. But the next morning, you discover that this subscriber count has dipped by a few hundreds.

This is surely a disappointing news for bloggers especially when it takes so much effort to build a reader base.

Why did these "hundreds of subscribers" unsubscribe from your blog in one single day ? The first thought that strikes your mind is "Did I write something bad that offended readers and so they unsubscribed in a fit ?"

Well, it's none of your fault in most cases.


It is normal to see minor fluctuations in subscriber numbers reported by Feedburner but if you notice a large variation (in three figures or more), the problem lies somewhere with the feed readers and RSS aggregators such as MyYahoo, Bloglines, Rojo, etc.

These aggregators are either returning incorrect subscriber count to Feedburner or not reporting the count at all and hence Feedburner may not be accounting for those readers. A similar issue happened recently when Feedburner removed the count of Rojo subscribers.

Rojo numbers could soon be back but the other good news is that Feedburner will now include MyYahoo! numbers in your subscriber Chicklet.

Your blog's RSS subscriber count is bound to travel north as MyYahoo! is one of the very popular readers out there.
Google

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