I am determined to learn how to make short videos to promote animals in need of homes. Pictures just don’t give justice to some of the dogs we have that need homes and I think that short videos would be much better.
I don’t need anything too fancy, and being computer stupid as I am, something user friendly is important.
What I want to do is add text, music, and slide shows of images to short videos. Starting with a short introduction of who we are (BARK), then add a brief description of a specific animal (text) followed with a brief narrated video, and finish with a brief slide show of images with music. Is it really hard to do this?
Can someone recommend a video editing software that can do this? Preferably something free I can download online, if not it has to be cheap.
Any suggestions or recommendations will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Chris
PS: I googled for this, and there are just too many choices available. That’s why I ask if some of you have have hands on experience with any of the many video editing software available. Cheers!
I downloaded a program called SweiStein. Impossible to use! Waaaay to hard even with the tutorials. I have wmm, I will give it a try again. (Tried before, couldn’t figure it out… Sigh…)
Something a bit more powerful and very decent is Sony Vegas. Should be ok for a home user to get a hang of.
Zwei Stien is nice if you know how to use it. I think it has way more functions then you need/want.
Definatly check out Windows Movie Maker and it should do what you want it to do. I just hope you have a pretty good computer because video editing eats computer resources.
OK… I figured it out… It’s not that hard! I’m using Windows Movie Maker and I was able to do everything I need to do. It took a bit of reading and a few hours, but I got my first video finished!
I will host it and post a link later.
Thank you to the three of you who responded, I appreciate it.
No kidding! I have this 7 minutes video saved as a project in Windows Movie Maker, but three times I tried to save it on my computer, and three times my computer shut down! CPU overload or something like that!? Aaaargh! I have a video, which I proudly created, not to mention that I went out today to film a dog and spent hours learning this stupid software, and now only I can view it!
How much does one have to spend on a computer that can save a stupid movie?! I am so frustrated with this right now you have no idea!!!
OK, gotta love google; I figured out my problem. Computer is heating up too much and it’s going on a self preserving mode which means to turn itself off to prevent a meltdown.
I opened the side panel on the tower and I pointed a house fan directly at it and I managed to copy/save this video. Needless to say, I need to have an extra fan installed to cool things down more appropriately, but for the time being I did OK with a house fan.
Will post a link of the video tomorrow… (It’s uploading on YouTube now) It’s bloody 5 am and the persistent bugger that I am is going to bed.
It is fairly easy to add a better cooler to your computer, but it also takes some knowledge of how to install things as you have to take the motherboard out. I would help you but I am off to Canada in 6 hrs Video time is also a good time to add another hard drive or 2.
For now stick with the fan, but don’t put a house fan too close (1 foot). And turn on the AC! it makes a big difference.
For video I was recommended to learn the Sony Vegas one. It is harder but can do more. But movie maker might be all you ever need. Keep it under 1 minute for Youtube.
It’s usually best to run a separate hard drive for saving video material and projects to as it really does consume far too many resources and can drag the speed of operating down to a crawl without enough space.
I run Premiere which I really like and although I am not familiar with perhaps half of the functions, the half I do know are useful and easy to use. It is a case of only being easy if you know how though as it took me a few days to figure out some basic stuff in there, but now I have few problems. I would say the greatest difficulty I had was appreciating the many various video formats and the pros and cons to each one.
I tried Uselead (is that how you spell it?) and windows movie maker before I tried Premiere and I wasn’t impressed with either of them crashing or becoming too slow after a while of editing one project. It seems to me that the more instructions you give the computer and the more cuts, compressions, pastes etc, the more the computer has to remember for when it gets to finally render the work, and some computers will just get to breaking point and fail to remember any more and perhaps crash. This is why you need a lot of RAM and a hefty processor for lengthy work. I now have 1 gig of RAM and a Pent 4 3.0GHz, 3.01GHz processor. There is no lag here now, and my editing program works seamlessly.
I have a Pent 4, 3.0GHz with 489Mb of Ram and I had no problem editing the video. Window Movie Maker worked well and fast. But came time to save it on my computer, the whole thing went POOF! Luckily, WMM saved the project automatically. The first time it went POOF, I wanted to cry because I thought I had lost the whole works.
The maximum allowed on YouTube is 100Mb and/or 10 minutes videos. My first video is 7:05 minutes long at a size of 76.6Mb.
Opps. Type o
Here is a zero, 0, Please add it to my last post…
That is an odd amount of rams, usulay come in multipals of 8. 256 or 512. But I might have some more for ya. Hold on till I get back in Aug and I will look.
Yea, the adjusting and stuff really isn’t to hard on your computer but the actual compiling and video stuff does strain your computer that is why it was overheating.
I called a technician today and he’s coming on Tuesday to service my machine.
He says that my machine is probably due for cleaning because when things get too dusty the heat can not disperse as well. So he’ll be cleaning it up and installing one more fan to keep it nice and cool.
I’ve only just bought this computer (second hand) just recently. I need it to run for quite some time yet.
My tech just left. He cleaned everything, he installed an extra fan and an extra 500Mb of Ram. I now have about 1 gigabyte of Ram.
Things open up quite faster, I can do more things at once, and we also tried doing the video processing that was blacking out the computer before. It took 4 minute!
I’m good to go. Glad I was able to make this computer work for my new hobby of making videos. It’s so cool, I can make animated slide shows of all kinds of pictures I have, with music and all.
[quote=“bobepine”]My tech just left. He cleaned everything, he installed an extra fan and an extra 500Mb of Ram. I now have about 1 gigabyte of Ram.
Things open up quite faster, I can do more things at once, and we also tried doing the video processing that was blacking out the computer before. It took 4 minute!
I’m good to go. Glad I was able to make this computer work for my new hobby of making videos. It’s so cool, I can make animated slide shows of all kinds of pictures I have, with music and all. [/quote]
Sounds good.
Hope we can see more animals get good homes because of your videos. =)
Like Bobopine of old, I find myself in need of a simple and free software. 10 years later, is Movie Maker still the go to choice? Or can someone update this thread with their current advice.
Video time is also a good time to add another hard drive or 2.
