Basic video editing question

[Dave W]

I've never done any video editing because I've never had a video camera. Now I'd like to upload some old songs to YouTube. These don't have videos with them, I want to make something up like other ones I've seen that use a title and one or more still photos as the video to accompany the song. Nothing fancy.

Is this doable using Windows Movie Maker? Is there any easier way, like some simple dedicated program? I've seen Muziic's free encoder but it only allows one still photo to be used and it has Muziic's name on the screen.

[OldManC]

Dave, I've only ever used my mac for video stuff but I went to the Windows site and Windows Movie Maker (II at least) looks a hell of a lot like imovie, which is Apple's bundled/consumer video editing program. The way the site is laid out to show each step you can use to create your 'own' movie looks basically the same as how I do it with my home movie footage. I'm sure you could pull off what you're describing with it.

[Dave W]

Thanks, George. I looked and found a YouTube video from 2007 that explains how to create one using photos and titles, it was intended as a tutorial for Blogger which apparently didn't allow embedding mp3s alone at the time, but it still tells me everything I need to do to create and save it to my computer. From there I can figure out how to upload it to YouTube.

Pretty simple unless you want to make it fancy. Import audio track, import photos and stretch to the audio.

BTW, Windows Movie Maker should already be on your PC. It was originally under accessories in XP, now as of XP SP3 and Vista (and 7, I assume) it's just in the general list of programs.

[Pilgrim]

Dave, I work with various digital editing systems - all PC based.  Windows Movie Maker is actually pretty good for what you want to do.  It's not the most sophisticated and there are some limitations on effects and transitions, but it gives you decent ability to manipulate clips.  It's not designed for multi-track audio editing, but it can handle stereo.  It's not included in Win 7 but it's part of XP and can be downloaded in Vista.

Here's a related article: http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/video/articles/22658.aspx

Thanks to your question, I realized that this computer (64-bit Win 7 OS) doesn't have movie maker so I'm trying to download MM version 2.6 as per the article above.  The link in that article is incredibly slow to respond, but this link worked for me: http://www.soft82.com/download/Windows/Windows_Movie_Maker.  That link worked right away and I now have MM on this computer.

Simple tricks 101 (this only took me about 30 minutes to figure out): Want to do a fade up from black to video?  Cap your camera and record a few seconds of black - transfer to computer - edit the black file and trim it to 2 seconds.  Drop the 2 second file in front of the video, then do a transition between black and video.  Same idea for fade to black at the end.

A step up would be Pinnacle Studio softare, which can be purchased packaged with the Pinnacle Dazzle unit.  The Dazzle is a pretty slick device - it's an outboard A > D converter which lets you connect S-video or composite video and two audio channels and digitizes them in an outboard device that plugs into a USB port.  Pinnacle Studio software lets you store and edit the video, or their DVD Recorder software in the package burns the input directly to DVD while it's playing.  The Dazzle unit can often be found on Ebay for under $50.  The trick is that the software works best in version 12 and later, but the boxes aren't labeled as to which version comes with the Dazzle.  At any rate, I've used it and it has more sophistication than MM.  If you go after it, make sure to get a version that has Pinnacle Studio software packaged with the Dazzle - some versions only have the DVD Recorder software.

Here's an example of the right unit: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=pinnacle+dazzle&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=57502156493755739&ei=lKpIS_3KG86Utgeyu43kDQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q8wIwAw#ps-sellers

One other note - the Dazzle does not seem to recognize copy protection.  This has allowed me to transfer some old VHS material (at good VHS quality) that I would have lost otherwise.  Let's call the resulting DVDs "backups", as I only want one DVD copy anyway.  I've transferred a number of laserdiscs and VHS tapes using playback machines with an S-video output.  I recently learned how to compress and package these videos for playback on a Blackberry or Sansa View...and even though the resolution of a VHS > DVD transfer isn't great, on a BB size screen it looks great!

Video production is something I do.

[Highlander]

Messed around with some Pinacle software some years back but was too intensive for the PC I had at the time - not reloaded as I stopped messing with the fancy stuff (fades/blends/effects). What I got done was nice - our USA trip for the family - got our 1st camera in 93/94 (rented at 1st - now on our 2nd basic JVC) so years of stuff to transfer to DVD...

My dad was living on the Island so we used to send him vids of our daughter to keep him up-to-date...

Nowadays we have a recorder with a VHS tape player built in, so we're covered...

I should load some music some time so you can hear the Peter Cook - I guess I will post repairs...

Good luck with the work, Dave...

[Dave W]

Thanks, guys. I do have Movie Maker on my XP desktop and Vista laptop, that will do. I sure don't need anything more complex, just wondered if this was the best relatively simple way.

I heard Microsoft unbundled some features for Win 7 (Windows Mail, for one). This may be due to antitrust lawsuit settlements. It's still available for free.