How to add effects with iMovie 11

Change a clip's look progressively over time using iMovie's built-in effects
Modern camcorders can automatically focus, white balance and colour correct for you. As such, most of your clips will look fine and be ready to be included into a project the moment you import them. But machines being what they are, they do sometimes get it wrong, which is why iMovie's various video tools can come in so handy.

With them, you can alter the brightness, contrast and colour of any shot. You can obviously use them to also distort the image, giving it an unnatural appearance to simulate unusual weather conditions or to create that alien planet feel you were after.

Couple those changes with one of iMovie's 19 video filters and you have a broad palette to play with (you can also copy and paste those changes from one clip to others by using the Edit > Paste Adjustments commands in the menu bar; these can save you a lot of time if you want to create a special visual style for a large part of your project).

Unlike Final Cut Pro and other professional editing packages, there isn't an obvious way to gradually apply that change over time – it's a black and white clip, or it's a colour one, for instance; there's no in-between.

So what do you do if you want to play around with your image and slowly intensify the colour – like the effect in Limitless when a mind-enhancing tablet is taken? Thankfully, such an effect isn't out of the reach of iMovie. All you have to do is cut the clip in the right place, as shown below.

How to alter a clip progressively over time

1. Find and cut


Find the clip you want to alter over time and add it to your project. Skim over it with the mouse until you're over the part you'd like the change to occur. Without moving the cursor, press the Shift+Command+S keys to activate the Split Clip tool, which cuts the clip into two at that very point.

2. All change


Double-click on one part of the clip to bring up the Inspector window. Select the Video tab and make your changes. You can also make use of the Video Effect menu in the Inspector's Clip tab to add a single effect to your clip (only one can be used at a time). You can alter your modifications at any time.

03. Transition


Go to Window > Transitions to reveal the Transitions panel, bottom-right of the interface (or use the Command+4 keyboard shortcut). Locate Cross Dissolve and drag it onto the gap between the clips. To change its length, double-click on it in your project and type in a new value in the Duration field.

Use Extermal Microphones with iMovie 11 to Make Your Video Better

If your movie sounds great it will make your screen images look even better 

There's one element that makes it obvious you're watching an amateur movie as opposed to a professional one: the audio. Although nearly all camcorders or video recording devices capture sound as well as images, the quality is often very poor. Even HD camcorders that produce vibrant, high-quality clips are often let down by the low quality of the on-board mic.


It's a well-known fact that audio is crucial to the appreciation of your film. Poor sound makes your audience feel that the video was actually of poorer quality than it actually is. Good-quality audio enhances the whole experience. So get yourself a device whose sole purpose is recording sound and you will greatly increase your production value for very little money indeed.

Small recorder 

 

Take the Samson Zoom H1, for instance. It's a tiny audio recording device that records very high-quality sound in stereo. You can choose various formats, but since we're going for quality, you should select an uncompressed one: WAV. This means that the files will take up more space, but this is a small price to pay for higher quality.

If you're going to go for this device (which is available via www.amazon.co.uk) make sure you also budget for its Accessory Pack, which includes a tripod and a windscreen foam cover, designed to cut out unwanted sound (which often gets captured, especially when shooting outdoors). In total, this should cost you something in the region of £100.

If your camcorder is capable of taking in audio input – with a line in stereo jack, for instance – then you could connect it to your microphone. That way you wouldn't have to worry about syncing the sound with the video later on in the editing process. But having an external mic can offer you advantages that those tethered to the camera cannot match: you could have a long shot and still hear the people you're recording perfectly because the mic is hidden near them and a long cable would be hard to conceal from view.

So if you've got your audio and video on separate files on your Mac, how do you go about connecting them together? This can be a little difficult to achieve in iMovie but it can work.

First of all, you need a clear point of reference to achieve the sync. This is where clapperboards come in, but why purchase one when a couple of hands clapping will work just as well? As long as your clap can be seen on screen and heard on the audio track, then you can add a marker on your project when the clap happens (markers are one of iMovie's many hidden advanced tools that you can reveal from the Preferences window).

Toggle the waveforms for your audio tracks to see the spike that represents the clap, and move it until that spike is under the marker. Mute the original audio and play your footage back. Drag the audio left or right until the sync is perfect. Once you've achieved this, you might not use your camcorder's built-in microphone ever again.

YouTube Video Editor Already Used by Two Million People

Earlier this fall, YouTube debuted a web-based video editor that empowered the many millions of YouTube users to improve their videos even if they didn't have any knowledge about video editing or the money to buy specialized software.

The YouTube video editor was designed to be easy to use so it is rather limited in terms of features. That turned out to be a good thing as the editor has proven quite popular with plenty of users.

YouTube now says that two million people have used the tool to improve their videos and have worked on four million different videos, as NewTeeVee noted.

The idea behind the video editor was to empower those that had no way of improving or adjusting their videos and had no idea how to do it.

There are too many videos flipped to one side or videos that don't actually start until they're half way through on YouTube that would definitely need the help.

Considering the target audience, it's easy to understand why there are only a few features and buttons in the editor. But the ones that are there are exactly the ones that people would use the most.

One particularly interesting feature is "I'm Feeling Lucky" which automatically enhances a video, by boosting the colors, contrast or brightness when needed.

It's not perfect by any means, but the results can be surprising, when it works. A unique advantage of the "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature is that it analyzes the entire video and makes the necessary adjustments to every frame.

Doing the same manually with the tools provided by the YouTube video editor would be incredibly time consuming.

An interesting thing about the feature is that it was entirely coded by a YouTube intern over the summer. He set out to make videos better "just by pressing a button" and managed to do it in just two months.

Source is
http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Video-Editor-Already-Used-by-Two-Million-People-236911.shtml

How to smooth out the shaky shots with iMovie 11

1. Analyse in an Event

You can analyse your clips even before you add them to a project. To do this, select a clip (or multiple ones) and open the Inspector by clicking on the toolbar's 'i' button. Make sure that window's Clip tab is selected and click on Analyse Entire Clip. The process may take a while.

2. Choose the right part

By default, an analysed clip will have its motion smoothed automatically as soon as you insert it into your project – as long as you don't select any part of the clip that had those red squiggly lines. If you do, the stabilisation process will not occur, so make sure you only add a section that will work.

3. Stabilisation control

Play that clip back and you should see an improvement over the original. Unlike the green screen effect, you have some control over the process: double-click the clip to open the Inspector. The stabilisation section has a slider. Drag it to the left to lower the amount of stabilisation applied to your clip.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5: Learn by Video (Book with DVD-ROM) by Maxim Jago and Jan Ozer

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is a complete program that consists of high quality, Adobe approved video training that is meant to teach you the fundamentals of Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5. When you register your book at Peachpit, you will get bonus training that covers CS5.5

The videos contained within are short, focused, and solution-oriented. Exercise files are included so that you can get hands-on experience using this powerful program. This HD (720p) video is 15 hours in length and contains 13 chapters. There is also an 120 page booklet that highlights what you learn in the video as well as additional information.

Chapter 1, "Introduction," begins with a look at how Premiere Pro works. Here you will take a tour around the interface, see how to start editing, how to share assets with After Effects, and perform some basic tasks.

Chapter 2, "Getting Set Up," next shows you how to create and set up new projects, looks at Premiere Pro preferences, recording clips, capturing clips, creating a storyboard, saving your work and much more.

Chapter 3, "Editing Clips," examines one of the main purposes of Premiere Pro is in cutting. Here you will see how to work with tracks, timelines, and sequence structures as well as track patching and other types of editing.

Chapter 4, "Transitions," describes not only how to move from one clip to another, but how to add edits, trim clips on the timeline, transition effects, how to select video and audio separately and together, as well as keyframing opacity to create transitions.

Chapter 5, "Nested Sequences and Multi-Camera Editing," looks at more advanced editing techniques such as working with nested sequence clips, multi-camera editing, synchronizing multiple clips, switching camera angles on the fly, and finalizing multicam edits.

Chapter 6, "Effects," let you correct problems like poor exposure or white balance as well as embellish your clips. Here you begin with an introduction to effects and then go through everything from the new Mercury Playback Engine, keyframing effects, picture-in-picture effects, 3D effects and much more.

Chapter 7, "Creating Titles," is a powerful and commonly used element of video production and here you will begin working with text, title templates, creating moving titles, and creating titles in Photoshop.

Chapter 8, "Integrating Premiere, Photoshop, and After Effects," is really one of the big "WOW" factors when working with Premiere Pro and this chapter explores the Creative Suite Production Premium and looks at Photoshop basics, After Effects, and how they can interact.

Chapter 9, "Audio," is at least as important as the video and you will now look at working with audio in Premiere Pro. Here you will see how work with the extensive audio-related toolset that comes with this product. You will work with audio volumes, gain, waveforms, creating submixes, Soundbooth, recording voiceovers, and more.

Chapter 10, "Metadata and Content Analysis," shows how to add metadata to clips, convert speech to text, work with transcribed text, and face detection in the project panel. All of this will improve the efficiency of your workflow.

Chapter 11, "Outputting Video," means that it is time to share your project with the world. This chapter examines recording to videotape, working with the output settings dialog box, work with Adobe Media Encoder, and optimizing your project.

      
Chapter 12, "Working with Adobe Encore CS5," takes a look at the Encore interface, what Encore does, how to link everything together, and building your DVD, Blu-ray, and Flash output. 

Chapter 13, "Production Support with Adobe OnLocation CS5," finishes the video up with working with OnLocation – a unique tool for pre-production and location filming. Here you will see how to prepare for your shoot, calibrate your monitor, and record your footage as well as direct-to-disk recording and selecting clips for Premiere Pro.


Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is really well done and easy to understand. The presentation is straightforward and presented in a manner that almost anyone can understand. What I liked best is the fact that they work through a real editing situation while still managing to show you almost everything there is to know about Premiere Pro.

Also, in addition to having the ability to send the videos to your iPhone or iPad, there are lesson files and media that come with the DVD, there is a section at the end that will allow you to quiz yourself, and a booklet provides summary information so you don't have to always go back and re-watch the video. If you want to learn how to use Premiere Pro, if you have worked with it, but want to really get better fast, then I highly recommend Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

Source is
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-adobe-premiere-pro-cs5/page-2/

10 Insider Tips for Getting the Most out of Sony Vegas Pro 11

Have you upgraded to Sony Vegas Pro 11? Use these tips to get the most out of the new features.

1.    To deliver a high-quality video file for posting on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or your own website, render to the MainConcept AVC format and use the Internet HD 1080p template. This provides a  high-quality video, and if you have an OpenCL-enabled graphics card in your render computer, the render will draw on the card’s GPU to render significantly faster than other formats.

2.    To render a file for Web streaming, render to the MainConcept AVC format and select the Enable Progressive Download checkbox in the Video tab of the Custom Settings dialog box. This results in a file that users can seek through even before the entire file has finished downloading from the streaming server.

3.    In the Render As dialog box, select the Add this render template to your favorites button for each template that you frequently use. Then, when you want to find those templates in the future, select the Show favorites only checkbox. This sorts your list of file formats and templates down to just those you’ve marked as favorites. Instead of looking through dozens of formats and scores of templates, you now only need to browse through your few favorites to find the one you want.

4.    If you have several events on your timeline that are related (for example, as part of a sequence), you’ll probably want to be able to control their position on the timeline as a related pack of events. The Grouping function is great for this. However, if you know that you may also need to tweak the placement or trimming of individual events within the related pack (e.g., making minor adjustments to the position of a sound effect event), grouping can be too restrictive. In such cases, use the new Sync Link feature to create a relationship between the events. Sync Link works much like Grouping in that you can move the entire pack by moving the control event, but offers more flexibility to adjust individual members of the pack without adjusting the others.

5.    The new OFX implementation for video filters, transitions, and media generators, provides you with greater control over parameter animation. To animate any parameter in these plug-ins, click the individual Animate button for that parameter. If you’ve animated several plug-ins in the same chain or several parameters of the same plug-in, click the Curves button to view and work on the resulting automation envelopes separately. Click the tag for the effect and parameter you want to adjust in order to sort the envelope view and make it very easy to find the envelope you need for the parameter you’re adjusting.

6.    To quickly add animated text to your project, click the Media Generators tab and select the new Titles & Text generator from the list. Point to the various presets to find the animation you like, and drag that preset into your timeline. If you decide you want a different animation, choose the new one from the Animation drop-down list in the Video Media Generator window.

7.    When using the new Titles & Text generator, use the text box that appears in the Video Preview window to adjust the size and position of your text. This makes it extremely easy to place your text into your video in a way that is most appropriate relative to the content of your video. If the position box does not appear in the Video Preview window, click the Generated Media button for the event that holds your text on the timeline. This opens the Video Media Generators window with the text controls in it, and also opens the position box in the Video Preview window.

8.    If you experience an edge violation in your 3D video clips, the viewer’s brain will have trouble making sense out of the placement of objects in the foreground of your scene. To avoid this problem, use the Floating Windows controls in the Stereoscopic 3D Adjust filter to mask the appropriate video stream, thus eliminating the conflicting visual signals caused by the edge violation.

9.    When you use the Cookie Cutter filter or the Iris or Cross Effect transitions on 3D footage, the cutout created by these plug-ins can conflict with the 3D placement of objects in your video. To correct such conflicts, use the new Stereoscopic 3D Depth Control to move the cutout behind or in front of screen depth so that it works more effectively with other objects in the video.

10.  You can specify whether you want Vegas Pro to process event video effects in your project either before or after any cropping adjustments to the event. Depending on the effect you’re using and the pan/crop adjustments you’re making, this can have a big impact on the final appearance of your video. Event pan/cropping is simply a part of the video event FX chain and you can place it anywhere within that chain. If you want to pan/crop before any video effects, you don’t need to change anything — this is the “Pre-Effect Mode” and is the default state. If you want to pan/cropping after the effects are applied (Post-Effect Mode), drag the “Pan/Crop“ button from the beginning of the effects chain and drop it after the button for the effect. You can set pan/cropping into post-effects mode for some effects in the chain while it remains in pre-effects mode for others.

Source is
http://www.onlinevideo.net/2011/11/10-insider-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-sony-vegas-pro-11/

How to use iMovie add steadycam effect

Stabilise your shots to smooth the motion for that professional touch

The Shining is probably the best example of the use of steadycams, as the camera glides through the hotel's corridors and its maze.

Usually, to get a steady moving shot, you'd put your camera on a dolly – essentially a set of tracks – but there's obviously huge limitations to this technique: one is that you mustn't show the ground otherwise you reveal the tracks; another is the difficulty in going up or down stairs.

With a steadycam, you can follow your subject wherever they may go. Proper steadycams cost an absolute fortune, but the Smoothee for iPhone is relatively cheap at £170 and if you're a handy DIY person, Johnny Chung Lee very kindly posted an article on how to build your very own steadycam for little more than US$14 (£9) in parts. The instructions are at www.littlegreatideas.com/stabilizer/diy.

Using a steadycam requires quite a bit of practice, but once you've perfected your moves, you can create incredibly smooth motion as you walk, no matter what you follow. Sadly, not all of us are handy with a screwdriver and until the cheapest steadycam in the world becomes available for sale you may have to do your best.

But Apple hasn't left you high and dry: iMovie has a tool for stabilising your clip's motion. It can't work miracles and an overly shaky shot won't be fixed (instead, you'll see a red squiggly line over the problem segments in its Event), but it can be highly effective on most clips.

How to Working With Green or Blue Screens in Home?

Being able to fly, walk on an alien world or survive a spectacular accident is par for the course in most blockbuster Hollywood movies. But obviously none of it is real – it's all done with smoke and mirrors, or more precisely, chroma keying.

The idea behind the process is that it's easy to cut out a single colour, rendering it transparent and allowing you to put something else in its place. Green or blue are used because both colours are the furthest away from all human skin tones.

One of iMovie's advanced tools is the ability to automatically remove a green or blue background from a clip. But how do you get such a background in the first place?

Low budget

That's where it gets a little complicated, but it's perfectly achievable and the results are very effective, even on a low budget. Then you'll be able to be anywhere in the world. You'll need to get yourself some equipment, none of which is optional if you want the effect to work properly.

The first one is a backdrop. If you already have a green or blue sheet, or even a wall of the appropriate colour, you could experiment with it and see if it works as expected. Otherwise, eBay has a lot of resellers offering affordable chroma key backdrops.

What's more important is the lighting. You need to evenly light your backdrop; then you'll need to light your subject separately. This way, it'll be much easier to find the edges around the subject to avoid a potential halo around it when the backdrop is cut.

Since you're on a budget, you need to find workarounds to expensive modern professional lights. Twin 500W halogen work lights on a tripod will do an excellent job. Get two sets – one for either side of the screen.

Using the same lighting system for your subject would completely wash it out. Getting redheads is probably your best bet as it's not the most recent technology, so you can get them cheaper. Again: eBay. Make sure you get at least two to light your subject evenly.

Lastly, you need to make sure your camera will remain static for the whole duration of the shoot, so either place it on a shelf or stool, or invest in a tripod. Since the purpose is to keep the camera motionless, the most basic tripod will do. You won't be able to do tracking shots or follow the subject as they walk around; you'd have to match the movement with the background exactly and this can only be done with motion-tracking cameras.

Light placing

Next, you'll have to experiment to make sure the lighting is in the right place for the effect to work, and then import the footage into iMovie.


Then you need to make sure the program's Advanced Tools are turned on (done from the Preferences window). Then, add your backdrop onto your project and drag your green/blue screen clip on top of it.

Select the appropriate pop-up option and the background clip should appear behind your subject.

How to create a dolly zoom effect with iMovie 11

1. Get Advanced

In order to work with a blue or green screen clip you need to turn on the Advanced Tools. Go to iMovie > Preferences (or use the Command + , keyboard shortcut).

Make sure the General tab is selected (first on the left) and tick the Show Advanced Tools box to give you more editing and organising options.
2. Stack up your clips

Choose your backdrop from an event or from your photo library, and add it to your project. Next, find your subject and drag it over the backdrop. You'll be given a series of options. Select either Green Screen or Blue Screen – depending, of course, on the colour of your backdrop.
3. Apply Ken Burns

Select the backdrop clip (to give it a yellow highlight around it), then click on the Crop tool in the tool bar (or simply hit the c key on your keyboard). This tool offers you three choices at the top-left of the main preview window: Fit, Crop and Ken Burns. Make sure the latter is selected.
4. Zoom Out

Now you should see two rectangles, one green and one red. Make sure the green one (your starting frame) is smaller and inside the red one (the clip's last frame). This will give viewers the illusion of the background zooming out over time. Now click the play button to preview it.
5. Fine-tune the Look

Click Done to set the effect. Be sure to check what it looks like with your subject over it. The effect may work best if either the top or bottom of the frame stays the same (right where the green and red rectangles meet) so go back and tweak your zoom until you're happy with the result.
6. Zoom In

You may also find that zooming in on your subject over time can improve the effect. You can apply a Ken Burns effect to your chroma keyed clip too, only make the change more subtle and make sure the end frame is smaller than the start frame. Your dolly zoom effect should then be complete.

CyberLink introduces new Video and Photo Creative Collection

Multimedia specialist CyberLink has introduced a new money-saving bundle in its latest media creativity suite, the Video and Photo Creative Collection 1.0.

Multimedia specialist CyberLink has introduced a new money-saving bundle in its latest media creativity suite.

The suite combines the company’s high-end video editor, PowerDirector 10 Ultra, with its excellent photography workflow package, PhotoDirector 2011.

The lead package here is plainly PowerDirector 10 Ultra. Not only does this deliver all the regular features you’d expect from a modern editor – powerful import capabilities, lots of effects and options, excellent audio processing tools, direct upload to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, DailyMotion and more – but it also adds extras like direct AVCHD camcorder import, 64-bit editing, end-to-end 3D editing, full HD preview, and BD, BDXL, AVCHD and 3D disc authoring, amongst other goodies.


PhotoDirector 2011 isn’t exactly short on features, either. It’s a complete photography workflow package to handle everything from importing your images (including many RAW formats), to precisely and quickly editing them, tagging and arranging them in your library, and exporting the results to Flickr, Facebook or YouTube to share them with the world.

What you don’t get here is any form of additional software to unify the two, no front-end menu of anything similar: both program shortcuts will appear in a Video and Photo Creative Collection folder on your Start menu, but that’s about it.

Source is
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/280677,cyberlink-introduces-new-video-and-photo-creative-collection.aspx

Mac & PC Computer Tips : How to Choose a Video Editing Program

Choosing a video editing software computer program depends on the type of computer, either a Mac or a PC, that a user works on. Find the right video software editing computer program withtips from an experienced computer user in this free video on computers. Expert: Charles Stewart Jr. Contact: www.ipsource.tv Bio: Charles Stewart Jr. has been working with both Windows-based and Mac-based computers for more than 10 years.


Building a computer network system requires having a central device, which could be either a hub, a switch or a router, a server and a PC for each user. Learn about the components of a computer network system with tips from a systems administrator in this free video on computer networking. Expert: Jonathan Hill Bio: Jonathan Hill works as a senior systems administrator for a large Web hosting company. He has achieved MCSA/MCSE credentials, among other industry certifications.

Apple Releases Final Cut Pro X 10.0.2 Update

Apple has released the Final Cut Pro X 10.0.2 Update via the Mac App Store.

According to the company, this update improves overall stability and addresses some minor issues including the following:

  Fixes an issue where a title may revert to the default font after restarting Final Cut Pro X.

  Resolves an issue that could cause files recorded with certain third-party mobile devices to play back incorrectly.

  Addresses a stability issue caused by changing the start time on a Compound Clip.

The Final Cut Pro X 10.0.2 Update is recommended for all users and requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.

Download in here

Avid Editing Tools to Ship with Sorenson Squeeze 8

Avid's 64-bit editing tools Media Composer 6, NewsCutter 10, and Symphony 6 will come bundled with the latest version of Sorenson Squeeze, version 8. Squeeze 8 launched on November 1, and includes greater adaptive bitrate support, x264 support, and enhanced GPU acceleration. Avid's relationship with Sorenson isn't a new one, as it's been bundling Squeeze with its professional editing titles for eight years.

The two companies announced an expanded distribution relationship, however, that will bring the bundled titles to more channels. Classroom buyers will find education packages, for example. Further, Avid and Sorenson will partner on new initiatives, such as the Avid Marketplace.

New versions of Media Composter, Symphony, and NewsCutter were announced on November 8, but are not yet available. The Avid and Sorenson applications work together, letting editors send video files directly for encoding. Buyers will get the base version of Squeeze 8. Upgrading to the full version will cost $149.
"Our featuring of Sorenson Squeeze 8 in our new releases reflects Avid's ongoing commitment to provide our customers with best-in-class tools that enable them to effectively execute on their creative vision for their video," says David Colantuoni, director of product management, video, at Avid.

Source is
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=78956

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 11video-editing software

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD is an affordable video-editing program that shares many of the features of Sony's more expensive professional-editing products. This makes it an excellent upgrade for people moving on from the free Windows Live Movie Maker.

Installation was simple – the Welcome screen gives the choice between starting and loading projects and starting the tutorials, which cover much of Movie Studio as interactive guides to the different tasks. A ‘Show Me How' button stays in the toolbar for help later on.

In the New Project window the user can select a video format based on either the source material or the final use. We were concerned that this would rule out working in custom settings but these can be set once the project has been created. The timeline has six tracks for text, video and music, and these can be replaced and extra tracks added if required, up to 10 each for audio and video.

Our first impressions of Movie Studio were that the interface was basic to the point of looking dated, though this turned out to be an advantage as the clear icons make the best use of screen space.

Icons for important editing options can be found at the end of clips on the timeline. The pan and crop and effects icons are always visible but there are others that may appear depending on what's being used. There are plenty of effects and transitions to apply to projects, all of which may be customised. It is possible to use a ‘green screen' to remove the background from videos, known as chromakey (any colour can be used for the background, not just green).

The video preview window can be detached from the main interface and moved to a second monitor if you have one. The preview shows both the current resolution of the project and the ‘preview' resolution. The latter is displayed in white when it matches the project settings, which is helpful. However, a quick way to resize the preview to the project resolution would have been handy, rather than having to do so by hand, as now.

On the Vegas DVD are some music, borders and illustrations that can be applied to your projects, but DVD access being rather slow compared with a hard disk, these will probably need to be copied to your computer before use.

Finished projects can be exported in several formats with options for direct uploading to Youtube and Sony's own video sharing website. Annoyingly, the resolutions of these output templates are fixed, but there are enough choices for most uses.

Unlike Sony's more expensive video-editing software, Movie Studio HD 11 cannot use the computer's graphics card to speed things up, or make 3D movies, but otherwise it's a hugely impressive editing program.

Source is
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/review/2121926/sony-vegas-movie-studio-hd-11video-editing-software

WeVideo delivers free collaborative, browser-based video editing

Despite the relentless coverage we give to the hardware end of the tech world, BetaNews is a software site at its heart, and we are always trying out new software.

Granted, in the last few years this has come to mean something different than it used to.

Most of the new software we are exposed to on a daily basis comes in the form of mobile applications, or as software-as-a-service or Web apps. This is because these are areas that haven't reached full maturity like desktop software has…and frankly, because it's still open season for developers to become quick millionaires on relatively straightforward concepts.

One of these areas of opportunity is in bringing established standalone applications to "the cloud," and turning them into collaborative Web apps. A few months ago, we looked at LucidChart, who was doing that very thing. They wanted to make a Web app version of Microsoft Visio, and had done a pretty good job with it.

Today, we took WeVideo for an spin. Even though this browser-based video editor is not even one year old, and is currently only in its second month as a beta, it's already an impressive product that is intuitive and fun to use.

It must be said right up front that this is not an HTML5 app. Like other graphically demanding multimedia browser content, WeVideo relies on Adobe Flash. So WeVideo's future on mobile devices is not extremely bright in its current form, but let's take it for what it has right now.

Users can upload their video to WeVideo and then edit it in a timeline format that should look familiar to anyone who's ever used a desktop video editor before. Videos can be cut up and rearranged, or layered with music and sound effects, graphical overlays, titles, and transitions. Each video project on the site can be edited and viewed by multiple users and saved under their respective profiles. Finished video projects can then be exported directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or Twitter.

WeVideo works on a freemium model, so the free user has 1GB of storage, and each project can have 5 collaborators. The real limitation comes in the export of this content: a free user can only export 15 minutes of video per month, and it is limited to 360p resolution with a WeVideo watermark. It supports in-app payments, however, and for a single payment of $2.99, users can export a higher quality video.

There are also subscription tiers that give users more storage, better quality exports, and the ability to collaborate with more users per project. The first subscription tier, ("Plus") costs $4.99/month or $49.99/year, includes 10 GB storage, 60 export minutes per month with 480p resolution, and no watermark, allows 10 collaboration invites per project and local downloads in addition to the export feature.

In typical web app fashion, the features of WeVideo are limited, but with an intuitive interface and the useful ability to collaboratively edit video projects, it's worth checking out.

Source is
http://betanews.com/2011/11/10/wevideo-delivers-free-collaborative-browser-based-video-editing/

Sony Vegas Pro 11 review

It’s a little disconcerting when a software publisher releases an update but doesn’t bother to put a list of new features on its website. We half expected Vegas Pro 11 to be a damp squib, but the truth is quite the opposite.

Many of the new features stem from a move to a new effects plugin architecture called OFX. This first appeared in version 10 but only for a solitary new effect. This time, 36 of the 57 existing effects – including all our most commonly used ones – have been ported to OFX, along with one new in-house effect and eight third-party effects from NewBlue.

OFX enables a feature we’ve been requesting for years: keyframe lanes. Previously, each effect had a single string of keyframes, and this made it tricky to automate multiple parameters because the timeline became clogged with redundant keyframes. For the OFX effects, each parameter has its own keyframe lane, which is enabled as required.

It’s also possible to create curved paths between keyframes using Bézier handles. These are features that Adobe Premiere Pro has offered for years, and it’s great to see Vegas Pro finally catch up.

Sadly, Bézier curves and keyframe lanes haven’t found their way to the Pan/Crop or Track Motion editors, which is where they’d be most useful. As a result, moving videos and graphics around the frame remains clumsy compared to Premiere Pro. Position keyframes get in the way of Rotation keyframes, for example, and there’s only basic control over the speed and trajectory.

OFX also introduces another, even bigger, new development, however: GPU acceleration. Sony has wisely chosen the OpenCL framework, which means you should see benefits from a wide variety of graphics hardware. Testing with our Intel Core i7-870 PC and Nvidia GTX 275 graphics card, the improvements over Vegas Pro 10 were immense.

With the preview window set to 1,920 x 1,080 and a light Gaussian Blur effect applied to an AVCHD clip, version 10’s preview frame rate dropped to 7fps. With version 11 it hovered just below 25fps with two instances of the same effect applied.

In another test, we stacked eight demanding effects on top of each other. Vegas Pro 10’s previews fell to 1fps, but version 11 managed 21fps. Rendering these same effects showed a 65% performance improvement.

These tests were designed to highlight speed improvements, so we also opened an old project created in version 10, and saw a 46% improvement in render speed. Basic decoding performance was up, too, with version 11 previewing six simultaneous AVCHD streams at 1080p whereas version 10 could only manage four.

Source is

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/371086/sony-vegas-pro-11

Editor Walter Murch is feeling better about Final Cut Pro X

When Final Cut Pro X debuted, it caused a stir in the professional video editing world. Long a standard tool for feature film editors, the latest version of Final Cut was designed more for the prosumer, and left some pro editors with a bad taste for the update. In a recent interview with Rick Young of MacVideo, film and sound editor Walter Murch discusses this new role of Final Cut Pro X.

Murch makes several key points about FCPX's role in video literacy and how its friendly interface makes it easy for students and new users to develop video editing skills. Looking beyong consumers, he's also hopeful Apple will gradually beef up the application and let third-party developers create tools that'll make Final Cut Pro X useful for the professional.

He sees FCPX as a tool that will gradually straddle the old world of analog-based non-linear video editing and the new digital-based future. Murch is not sure Apple can pull this off and create a tool that appeals to both the professional and the consumer, but if it does, FCPX could be the foundation for a new NLE ecosystem.
The 20-minute talk is an excellent commentary on the future of Final Cut Pro and film editing, in general. You can watch the full interview on MacVideo's website.

Source is
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/08/editor-walter-murch-is-feeling-better-about-final-cut-pro-x/

How to use ScreenFlow to edit video on Mac

ScreenFlow is a popular screen-recording and editing tool for creating screencasts, such as presentations, tutorials, and product demos, on your Mac. This app can handle every aspect of pulling together a screencast, from high-quality screen capture (including the ability to grab iSight and DV camera data, and mic and computer audio) to editing and exporting, with built-in YouTube publishing.

Now, the below 9 minutes video will teach you how to import, export, edit the video and other basic operation. Just enjoy it!

Facebook Acq-hires Mobile Video And Image Editing App Developer Digital Staircase

It looks like Facebook has just acq-hired mobile video and image app developer Digital Staircase, according to a blog post on the startup’s site. According to Facebook, Digital Staircase’s team will be joining the social network but Facebook has not acquired any of the technology assets from the startup.

Digital Staircase has developed a number of apps for video recording, image editing and more. MovieCam, which is available as an iPad and iOS app, is a camcorder app that provides recording features like 8x digital zoom, pause-and-resume recording functionality, and contrast enhancement. The app also allows you to add 18 movie effects and filters while shooting video.

iPhone app StereoCam aids in the quick creation of stereo image pairs. A stereo image pair consists of two specially designed images that are placed side-by-side to allow viewers (employing an appropriate viewing technique) to see the depicted scene in full.

Another iOS app SmartSplice uses advanced graphics algorithms to improve the speed and ease of creating high-quality image selections and provides image filters and a way to create professional-looking image effects.

From the post, it appears that the development team may be adding some of these functionalities to Facebook itself. Unfortunately, Digital Staircase will be removing its apps from the Apple App Store.

Dear Digital Staircase customers, followers, and supporters,
Hard to believe that it’s been 3 years since we started Digital Staircase. As with any startup, there have been ups and downs, but we’ve always had a blast working with you all to create new graphics apps and tools that make the joy of visual computing accessible. We’re announcing today that we’re being acquired by Facebook to help bring these mobile innovations to a broader audience. Many things may change, but our dedication to immersive experiences will not.
In a couple weeks (around 12/05/2011), we will be closing down Digital Staircase as a standalone entity and will remove all iOS products from the Apple iTunes store. Those of you who own apps (MovieCam, SmartSplice, StereoCam, etc) will still be able to use them on your current device. Please look out for new innovations to be added to Facebook.
Thanks for all the support, and feel free to contact us at support@digitalstaircase.com for more suggestions, comments, and feedback. We’re always looking for ways to improve the user experience.
Thanks,
The Digital Staircase Team

Avid Fires The Next Shot In Battle With Apple, Introduces New Media Composer

The anticipated next version of Avid’s Media Composer editing system—version 6—as well as its NewsCutter version 10 and Symphony version 6, will be available on Nov. 15. The new software includes a 64-bit architecture, as well as new 3D editing tools and increased support for third-party hardware.

Media Composer 6 in particular will be closely watched as it will be the first major new release of Avid’s flagship editing system since its chief rival in the editing space, Apple, launched Final Cut Pro X—which generated quite a bit of discontent in the professional community.

Apple claims to have the largest percentage of the nonlinear editing customer base with more than 2 million users, from hobbyists to professionals. Avid positions its Media Composer as the tool of choice in the professional space; American Cinema Editors’ most recent member survey found that the majority of its members use Avid.

Many of the new Media Composer features announced this morning will not come as a complete surprise to customers. Following the Final Cut Pro X launch last spring, Avid hosted a customer meeting at Warner Bros., during which—in an atypical move for Avid—it offered a glimpse at its Media Composer development roadmap. Avid also previewed some of these future tools in a technology demonstration at the International Broadcasting Convention in September.

A key Avid message is that it aims to increase speed and flexibility. Specifically, features include a new user interface; AVCHD and Red Epic support with Avid Media Access; Avid DNxHD 444, a high-quality HD codec; further integration with Avid’s audio post system Pro Tools, including 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound support; and color correction capabilities through support for the Avid Artist Color control surface.

The new 3D toolset is being tested by certain editors, who are using it to cut upcoming 3D features; Avid declined to name the editors and the film titles.

Avid reported that support for third-party tools includes video and audio cards from AJA Video Systems, Blackmagic Design, Bluefish444, Matrox and MOTU; and it gains the ability to encode Apple ProRes (Mac OS-based systems only).

“Those customers that kind of got stranded with Apple, now have a place to go,” said Chris Gahagan, senior vp of products and solutions at Avid. “Some of them were being held back because we didn’t support Pro Res or they wanted to use third-party I/O like AJA Kona. We are now going to make it easier for them to consider switching. We removed two of the big barriers. … They really do need a company that is more committed to their profession.”

Advanced iMovie Tips

iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPhone 4 and iPad 2 users to edit their own home movies. It was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled consumer Apple model – iMac DV. Since version 3, iMovie has been a Mac OS X only application bundled in the iLife suite of Macintosh applications.

iMovie imports video footage to the Mac using either the FireWire interface on most MiniDV format digital video cameras, the USB port, or by importing the files from a hard drive. From there, the user can edit the video clips, add titles, and add music. Effects include basic color correction and video enhancement tools, and transitions such as fade-in, fade-out, and slides.

Different with Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Por X, iMovie is a primary video editor. But even though, this software still has some advanced tips to help you create a great video. Here we go in the next video, it will teach you to getting more out of iMovie, including: 1080 Export with iMove, color grading, kenburns, and text effects.

How to Edit Video with Sony Vegas?

1.    Go to: File - New. This will bring up a new project where you will select your desired options. It will also ask you where you want your prerecorded files saved. Be organized! (If you ever need to work on something in the future, but you've move these files somewhere else in the meantime, Vegas won't be able to find them.) Make a new folder for your items. For learning purposes, keep the default settings: NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps). This is for your standard aspect ratio (4x3) and a standard frame rate. You'll notice other tabs such as Audio, Ruler, Summary and Audio CD. Just stick with Video for now. This is all you will need to get started.

2.    Select your options and decide what folder you're placing your data in. Then import your video to edit. To import you can select File, Capture Video. Or, if your video footage is already on the computer, just go to File, Import, Media. You also have the ability to just drag and drop media into Vegas from a folder.

3.    Click Capture Video. The program will ask if it's DV or HDV. Select what applies to your camera. A window called Sony Video Capture will pop up. This gives you the options to Capture, Advance Capture, and Print to Tape. After plugging in your camera with the appropriate method, the program will automatically recognize your device. Proceed to capture the video, which will import into Vegas.

4.   Importing from a file is as easy as drag and drop, or File, Import, Media. Either way the media will fall into the Vegas Timeline ready for editing. Just select what media you want to drop, either from the Import menu or using drag and drop, and you're ready to begin your edit. (Note: Import Media or drag and drop also works on pictures and audio.)

5.    Begin some basic edits, now that you have your media in place.

Basic Edits

1.   Hit Ctrl A and drag your media to the beginning of the time line, if necessary. Use the Up and Down arrows to zoom in and out of the frames. If you use the Up arrow as far as it goes, you will see all of the frames. Use the side-to-side arrows to rewind and fast-forward through the timeline. You can select and use the trimmer, but it isn't necessary. That's getting a little more technical.

2.    Delete visual or audio clips by selecting the undesired and simply hitting Delete on the keyboard. If you want to shorten the length of a clip, simply click on the end or beginning of the clip with your mouse, and drag it to the middle to your desired length. If you want to cut (or splice) a clip in two, simply zoom in with the Up arrow, scrub through with the side arrow, and hit S to splice exactly where you want.

3.    Apply simply effects. If you look at the end of each frame, you will see there are two buttons: Event Pan/Crop and Event FX. You can also step things up with plug-ins, although out of the box Vegas has a lot of plug-ins ready to go. Select all of the frames you want to have the same effect: group them by right-clicking and going to Group. Then when you apply anything to one frame, it will do it to them all.

4.    Speed up or slow down a scene using Velocity Envelope, which many call Motion Control. Just go to the desire section you want to add slow-motion to. Splice exactly the scene desired, then right-click the scene and select Insert/Remove Envelope; Velocity. This will make a green line appear in the middle of the scene. You can move it down for slow motion, or speed things up by moving it up. Right-click the line to assign markers. With markers, you can gradually speed things up or down.

5.    Render your video. Just take your loop region at the top of the time line right above the times. Make sure you're at the beginning of the video. Drag it to the end of your video. Go to File, Render As and select an option. You can render your video in many formats, such as .mov or .wmv.

WeVideo goes commercial with cloud-based video editing

Video editing startup WeVideo is launching a new product that will enable organizations to use its collaborative editing products in the cloud. The WeVideo Commercial product is aimed at bloggers, journalists, marketers and other video creators who wish to easily edit, manage and publish videos from a single online platform.

By putting editing in the cloud, WeVideo is taking advantage of cloud-based processing power to eliminate the need for expensive editing hardware and software. It’s also betting on collaborative editing, which allows multiple editors to make changes and to approve videos before they go live.

The platform offers a suite of tools that match most prosumer video editing software packages, and it comes with a set of royalty-free audio clips, transitions and graphics. Since all editing is done in a web browser, the platform is agnostic to the device it’s being edited on, whether it’s Mac or PC — and it can even be used to edit on smartphones and tablets when connected to the Internet. WeVideo is also agnostic as to the source file or publishing destination.

Once completed, videos can be published on a corporate website, as well as popular destination sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. WeVideo also incorporates social sharing tools to let users publish or embed videos on social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

WeVideo operates on a freemium model, and it already offers a free, consumer-based product, which it launched at the Demo conference in September. It’s also available to YouTube users as a way to edit videos directly on that site. With the launch of WeVideo Commercial, it’s giving enterprise users a much greater amount of storage (50 GB), as well as up to 1080p video resolution and 24-hour support for $79 a month.

Source is
http://gigaom.com/video/wevideo-commercial/