Which movie editor?

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Finis
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Re: Which movie editor?

Post by Finis »

Burnart's Paint Shop Pro use reminded me of Animation Shop. It came with Paint Shop Pro. I've used it for editing on small videos.
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Kurt
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Re: Which movie editor?

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Finis wrote:Burnart's Paint Shop Pro use reminded me of Animation Shop. It came with Paint Shop Pro. I've used it for editing on small videos.
This just gets better. I have Animation Shop, too. But by "small" I take it you mean small screen size, Finis, not short DVDs?
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Re: Which movie editor?

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Hello again Kurt,

One more thing: Even though I'm new to video editing, myself, I have friends who are pros and do it for a living. One of the things I've observed is that, no matter how great your software and hardware, the video editing process is filled with "gotcha's" that can torpedo a project.

Successful media creators develop a workflow that works for them regarding file formats and hardware hookups. Most of the one's I know receive HD video only on large flash memory cards and portable hard drives now from videographers so it's less about hardware problems and more about codecs, file formats, compression standards, etc.

It leads me to believe that video editing is not something you want to learn by yourself by experimentation. Learning how successful media creators do it will save enormous time and frustration. The folks at Muvipix.com do a lot of work with Premiere Elements and produce some nice work.

Best regards, First Light
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Re: Which movie editor?

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That makes sense, First Light. Anything turns out better if it's planned and consistent. And software that doesn't have at least a few glitches doesn't exist yet.

I think you're right that it's all about consistency. Working out a dependable regimen so that you get the most out of what you're using.

I've joined up at Muvipix and am in the process of exploring the forums before diving in. From what I've seen so far, they do seem to be mostly professional video guys.

Cheers,
Kurt
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Burnart
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Re: Which movie editor?

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Just to clarify something I said earlier. Partly its the limitation of the software I have and partly its my limitations as an artist but I always work in frame sequences and only go to avi at the end. With the software I have it affords me more options. Makes for a messy hardrive though with lots of directories full of hundreds if not thousands of images. With better hardware and software I might change my habits but I don't see it happening any time soon.
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Re: Which movie editor?

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Burnart wrote:Just to clarify something I said earlier. Partly its the limitation of the software I have and partly its my limitations as an artist but I always work in frame sequences and only go to avi at the end. With the software I have it affords me more options. Makes for a messy hardrive though with lots of directories full of hundreds if not thousands of images. With better hardware and software I might change my habits but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Understood, Burnart. But I'm still curious about that procedure where you can add effects to footage by importing it into, say, Photoshop, and applying layers of effects and/or artifacts by batch processing it. It sounds as if you can retouch individual photgraphs, hundreds at a time, then export them as playable footage again.

This intruiges me because it would mean that I could add elements to a scene that previously would require me to use chromakey, (which isn't always impressive in the final product, especially where the element you want to key in has curved edges.)

To me, that procedure seems like more of an opportunity than a limitation. Can you elaborate on exactly what things you can add to frames using Paint Shop or similar photo retouching applications? Can you only change image characteristics like colour, contrast, brightness, etc?

Or can you superimpose other objects over the image objects, like you can in the chromakey process?
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Re: Which movie editor?

Post by Burnart »

Sorry Kurt thats not what I'm doing. If I want to combine 2 elements say a full frame image sequence and an alpha channelled sequence of images I might do that in pIllusion (particle Illusion from Wondertouch). Alternately I could load the alpha channelled item onto a plane and re-render with the full frame image sequence in the background. Kind of a manual multipass approach.

I use paint shop prop for image tweaking, colour alteration, smoothing, cropping, resizing, applying ps plugins etc. To combine elements you would need to be able to get your paint program to read 2 (or more) lists of images at once - one to use as the base layer and one to use as the overlay. As far as I know that can't be done with psp9 though I can't vouch for later versions or any other software. I could be wrong though - I haven't looked into it sufficiently.
Last edited by Burnart on 03 Sep 2009, 22:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Which movie editor?

Post by Kurt »

Yes, I can see how that would be a bit tricky. Two complete sequences of images to be married together would present a challenge for a photo-retouching app., I guess. Oh well, PE7 has got chromakeying anyway.

The other thing I wanted to be able to do was what you currently do - that is, tweak the images of a sequence. I checked out the "batch" tool in Photo Paint but couldn't see how to make it do that.

Rather than clog up this forum with off-topic stuff, I'll google a forum on Paint Shop and pester them instead. :)

Thanks for your help.

Kurt
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Re: Which movie editor?

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I take it you mean small screen size
I don't know what the pixel limits are. I think Animation Shop is meant for making animated gifs so it does not handle large sequences of frames efficiently. It also has been vs. 3 forever so I don't think it is being updated. It does have a selection of transitions, filters, and FX. Sometimes I find something nice there that is easier or not in other software. So it might have a role as supporting software but not as a full movie editor. I made the opening sequence and credits on this with it: movie (lower quality here for file size)
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Re: Which movie editor?

Post by Burnart »

Hope it works out Kurt. The scripting in paint shop pro is pretty straightforward - hit the script record - manually process a single image - end and save the script you just recorded. Then use the batch process option with the apply script function ticked and the required script selected. Bob's your uncle - its fast too. Also you can open the scripts up in notepad and modify them manually if you want. Its a very nicely implemented capability in psp and a whole lot cheaper then photoshop. :mrgreen:
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