Video Editing Software

[Newbie]

I need some video authoring sofware that can combine video clips with transition effects. The transition effect I am mostly looking for is just turning the screen black for about 2-3 seconds while it transitions to the other video clip. The main video format I need supported is Mpeg2. Anyway does anyone know of any good software for this job? I've tried movie maker for sometime and it was working fine but all of a sudden just stopped importing videos correctly where the video would come in blurred.

[Vinthian]

I'd use the Windows Movie Maker. Comes with windows, should be in Accessories .

[Newbie]

Thanks for the response, but read the rest of my post as to why I am not using Windows Movie Maker.

[Delnar_Ersike]

Step 1: Move video to a Mac OS X computer
Step 2: Power up iMovie
Step 3: Enjoy!

Or if you have a lot of cash, you can buy FinalCut Pro. I heard that it has all the features of iMovie and Movie Maker and more (like grey countdown, clip cropping, etc.)

[Vinthian]

that's weird, i read it, but i misunderstood yah. it shouldnt' do that, but it may have to do with the type of video your importing. (like avi)

[Arcane Wizard]

http://www.virtualdub.org

[benryves]

I've been looking for some MPEG-2 editing software myself; Movie Maker crashes on import (and recompressing already compressed video to another intermediate format before finally recompressing again does not appeal to me). I haven't found any decent free editors for Windows, so am actually writing my own. :\

[JoeImp]

I'd be rather surprised if you managed to code your own. It'll probably just use the same common functions built into the api that all the other half-assed programs/players out there use. To code something better from scratch would take so much work, so much time.

[DigiTan]

[Newbie]

Does virtualdub even have the ability to join clips and put transitions between them?

[Arcane Wizard]

...

[JoeImp]

[DigiTan]

Then let's maybe find a more delicate way to say: "You're not up to it. It will be ½ assed," etc. Maybe a spirited: "Good luck with that." Or a: "Whoa nellie, themz some Texas-sized goals, pardner!"

[JoeImp]

I've typed out like 5 different paragraphs here, all with witty little sniper remarks, but decided not to go that way in this thread.

Here's my advice though: You'd better have YEARS of experience and either months/years of your life or a team of programmers behind you to even think about such a project. Good luck, I'd never try it, unless I was hired to do it.

[DigiTan]

Just suggesting. He could always collaborate. Just make sure -benryves- you hook me up with your Pro version and not the 30-day trial when you're done.

[Arcane Wizard]

Yay for open source libraries.

[benryves]

When I say editor, I'm not saying something that will compete with Premiere, but I will be writing a tool to help me work with my video files. It's also a valid excuse to better get to grips with COM interop from managed code.

I'd be using DirectShow. Which has no problems loading the files and extracting frames and audio, as you can see. DirectShow also provides the DirectShow Editing Service which will help reduce the thousands and thousands of lines of code to something more managable.

Yes, that's the "same common functions built into the api that all the other half-assed programs/players out there use". However, that my app can load and work with source files that cause the few apps I've tried to crash indicates that they're doing something funky that I'm not. If I have the source code I can work out where the problem is and work around it.

As for experience, I have written a bunch of one-shot programs to help me with video work in the past; some of the results are on here. And time? Well, you've got me there.

[Newbie]

[benryves]

I haven't had the problems you mentioned with blurry video. How do you mean blurred? (You're not referring to combing from fields from an interlaced source, are you - if so, use VirtualDub to clean that up if you don't want it).

The most successful mix of filters I've found is Elecard's splitter combined with the MPV decoder in the DirectShow filter pack.

Before installing new codecs, you can work out what's going on by running DirectShow Filter Graph Editor, going File->Render Media File and pointing it at your source .mpg. Once it has built the graph you can edit the individual filter properties and see which filters are being used. You can find this tool installed with the Windows Platform SDK, and is linked to in this thread.

If you want to convert an MPEG-2 stream to AVI, you can remove the sound/video renderers from the filter graph, attach a WAV Dest filter to the sound output, join both together via an AVI Mux and attach that to a File Writer. Alternatively, you can use a tool such as VirtualDubMod.

[Newbie]

Those filters are no good. After installing them and trying to import something into windows movie maker the program gets and error and crashes, forcing windows movie maker to close.

This is what my video looks like after importing it (mpg) and the filters you suggested are not installed.

[attachment=1335:attachment]

It only ever seems to be one video in the entire collection. All the rest are fine and were imported with the same filters it's just this one video, but this one video was made absolutely the same as the rest were.