Techie Question....

Ok...... I did look at the proper forum to gleen some info but.....

Two things......of so called 'free' machinima programs, I notice all are really just 'trials' so, I'd like to know which one (using windows) is going to give me the best capture/performance in-world.

I'll figure out the basics...I'm pretty good at learning new stuff.....I just don't know what to try.

Next......I know music can dubbed in.....and I have umpteen million tunes already loaded on my PC so I'm assuming I can use those. But.....what's the file format they need to be in? I don't do anything at all right now with my music, so I'm only vaguely familiar with my media player stuff......tho again, I'm guessing that's where I begin the process.

So......any help would be greatly appreciated. I want to do a video of the gallery of my mom's Art.....and ultmately my brother is going to write music for the gallery. But, getting his music into SL is a ways down the road.....so for now I just think it would be fun to do some machinima and dubb in some music that's apprapo. Is this making sense? lol

Fraps for recording, and Vegas for editing. Those two are still the gold standard in SL. And elsewhere too, I think.

You add music to the video when you edit in Vegas, in a separate audio track. MP3s work fine.

Have fun!

Okay....

Just downloaded Fraps.....(not sure where or what this Vegas key is) But I'll give it a try later in SL~!!!! Can I buzz ya in-world if I have a question?

thanks for the info~!!!!

Sure, anytime!

Vegas is a video editing program from Sony. It's an excellent piece of software. But like all commercial professional grade programs, it's a bit pricey. It'll set you back $550. There are some consumer grade versions of it, ranging from $55 to $115, but I've never used them, so I can't say if they're any good or not.

Unfortunately, even though Vegas is arguably the best video editing program on the market, it's not widely used in the industry. So if you're planning on collaborating with anyone else, it might be wise to choose an alternative program.

I switched to Adobe Premiere partly for this reason. It's just easier to share files with people, since Premiere is more of an industry standard. Plus, it just didn't make financial sense to stick with Vegas, since Premiere comes as part of the Creative Suite, and I use several other programs in the suite. It's basically a freebie for me, looking at it from that perspective.

To buy Premiere outside the suite would cost $799, though. So between the two, Vegas is the better deal (and the better program, in my opinion), if you're buying either one individually.

Premiere does also have a consumer grade version called Premiere Elements, which is only $140. But I haven't used it since version 3, and it's presently in version 8, so again, I can't comment as to whether it's any good or not. Elements does tend to come free with a lot of video devices these days, such as capture cards, A/V links, and cameras, so if you need to buy one of those anyway, that might be the way to go.

Here's what looks to be a pretty decent comparison of consumer grade video editing programs: http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

And here's a listing of some freebies you might want to try: http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/top-5-free-video-editing-software-review.html


Good luck, and have fun with it.

E-gads....I wont be spending any cash on a vid recording program LOL It just aint THAT impotent LOL

But.....I did a little more hunting around and found that Torley mentions Xfire as being quite the recording gem. So....I now have both Fraps AND XFire on my PC ready to go.

I figure I'll try them both and stick with which ever I am more comfortable with. But, now, with XFire....not sure about the adding in of music.....so if anyone uses XFire and can give me some tips....that'd be cool.

You're going to need a video editing program of some sort, no matter what. If you don't want to spend money, and you want simplicity, Windows Movie Maker actually isn't too bad. It's no-frills, of course, but if all you want to do is edit clips and insert an audio track, it will do the job.

Move Maker will only render to one format, though, WMV, which is not terribly useful. If you want to be able to convert to Quicktime, you can purchase Quicktime Pro for just $30. It's well worth it if you don't have a more full featured video editor at your disposal.

Second on Movie Maker for free basic software. I switched to Premier Elements a few months ago and it has a lot more features than Movie Maker. I still have a lot to learn on that program. I bought it as it was bundled with Photoshop Elements for around $180, but I found the package on sale for $100.

Is Videodub a program in the same use category as Moviemaker?

From what I can tell from its description and from its online guide, VideoDub is very different from Movie Maker. It's seems it's not really an editor, more of a cutter. Its only function is to allow the user to delete portions of video clips. Unless there's a lot of information missing on the websites where it's offered for download, I'd say no, VideoDub is not in the same category as Movie Maker.

I got the name wrong, it's VirtualDub, not VideoDub, a mistake I have made many a time before.

VirtualDub looks to be a bit more powerful than VideoDub, in that it does allow the user to apply various effects to a clip, as well as extract/remove/replace the audio, in addition to just cutting and trimming, but it's still not really a video editing program. Here's what I'm basing that assessment on:



For a program to be a real video editor, at the very least it must allow the user to assemble a movie from multiple shorter clips and media files. If it can't do that, it's something other than a video editor.