Windmills Movie Comments and Workflow

Hi

I have been trying to get the best workflow from SL - capture to final compressed edited movie. I have captured on macs using SL client and screen capture programs followed by editing on Final Cut and compressor for final output. I have also tried fraps, converted across to no compression then used final cut etc: But nothing really cutting the mustard.

So I was surprised when I set myself the task over the XMas break to making two short SL films in five hours each - that the best approach is the simplest, two steps. So fraps, straight into (wait for it) Windows MovieMaker and then export direct to WMV. The output seems a lot sharper than the mac work flow route - but of course MovieMaker sucks badly as an editor, still I managed to do this movie in five hours from start to finish - capture to final file. The music/song was done a couple of days earlier

http://www.justvirtual.com/SLWindmillsMind.wmv - a much better wmv 43MB file (comments please)

and the YouTube version, which is appalling as usual (flv hates dissolves!) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC3IGDIelPY

Gary

Thanks, on a number of levels, for posting this. First level: great concept, well executed. Second level: nice to see the difference between original and youtube version (now I know it's not just me). Third level: I can stop obsessing about workflow now because this obviously works.

Too bad it is so simple and cheap. Nobody will believe it. And I like what WMM does with finding clips. Maybe that is because of the way I work. I get files of, say 2 min, and only want 30 sec. I fined that WMM does a good job of separating the clips fo that I can easily find what I want.

I also use AVS for transcoding and for a few special effects. But when I gave it a large .avi file, it gave me no help on finding the part I wanted. I would never use it again for that purpose.

I tried Pinnacle, the free download. Instead of video, it gave me little green screens. A little effort got me the recommendation that I try degrading the resolution on my screen. That's not the kind of help I want.

If you want to see the work, I publish on YouTube as selbyevans.
TM