Interface Changes

Final Cut Pro X has been coined as a new system of its own rather than an update. For that reason, I’ll try not to use the word update too much in this article, but if I slip up, please forgive me. Contrary to the fact of it being a new system of movie editing, the interface seems like a Final Cut/iMovie combination with iMovie being dominant. With this being the case, Final Cut Pro X’s interface revolves mainly around the timeline, that little area in the lower mid-left region. This is where you will control most of what happens in the upper region, something very different from iMovie. This is very time efficient, but can be quite confusing when performing hard-core editing. One part of timeline that I really love is that if you drag any media into it, it will welcome the media with open arms. For example, when editing a video for YouTube, I dragged an older .mov clip in and the clip was added without any need of loading or processing.

Creating a New Movie

To create a new project, simply click with two fingers and click “New Project”. From there, you can name your project, set the default event, set video properties, and audio settings. This offers a lot of properties that you couldn’t preset in iMovie when creating a project. After creating the project, you are then forwarded to a blank timeline and an event filled with clips if you created an event already. From there, you can drag your clips in and create your movie. You have the option to adjust audio and video on the right hand side, add titles and effects from the bottom right, and more.

Speed and Processesing

Final Cut Pro X is a very fast video editing tool. As always, it depends on your hard drive space and speed, but from my tests, I can attest that it worked fine on a Macbook, Macbook Pro, and iMac. Without question, it also works without a hitch on a Mac Pro, but I didn’t have one available to test that for sure. So with good performance across the board, what is the reason behind this? The answer is in background tasks. Final Cut Pro X processes everything in the background, allowing you to get more things done faster. To be more informed of your background tasks, you can pay attention to the green circle with the percentage inside to know when a background task is complete. If it’s not, the percentage will reflect when it will be over. All in all, Final Cut Pro X presents you with true multitasking.

Options Galore

When editing your movie, you may find a title or an effect to be necessary for your project. Your options are now limitless with Final Cut Pro X. The system offers you with hundreds of effects for your video and audio. From boost of color to camcorder effect, there are a bunch of video and audio effects ready for you to use. You can click the camera to add photos from iPhoto, clicking the music allows you to add music from iTunes, audio effects, and more. Final Cut Pro X allows you to also add transitions, text, and more, just like with iMovie and the older Final Cut Pro, just with more options.

After the Fact

By now, your movie is finished and you’re ready to export. The best option with any Apple movie editor (iMovie, Final Cut, etc) is to click “Share -> Export Media”. With Final Cut Pro X, this will allow you to choose the best format to export in, you can also choose the last used settings for easier and faster exporting. A rule of thumb, the options may be overwhelming but for videographers who frequently share video online, you should export mainly in H.264. When exporting, you are brought to where you can choose where the movie will go after it’s exported, then the exporting begins.

Exporting took a very short time, usually about as long as the movie was. For example, my five minute video I edited last night took about four and a half to five minutes to export. Final Cut Pro X also has great organizational skills, including the ability to sort based on search keywords, remove shakiness, and to delete silent portions of your video. Don’t worry, all of these organizational adjustments are only implemented if you select them. So your silent film is safe.

Strengths and Faults

Final Cut Pro X is a great, fast video editing software. The background task feature allows you to truly multitask without a hitch. The familiar iMovie interface makes it appealing to former iMovie users who either were scared off from purchasing video editing software or would have gone to the now discontinued Final Cut Express. For many of those same reasons, we can now understand why the professionals in the video industry aren’t loving it so much. Final Cut Pro 7 for now seems like the best option for individuals in videography, like myself. Final Cut Pro X is too, shall I say it, watered down for the professionals out there.

To conclude, if you are new to Final Cut Pro X but not to Final Cut in general, don’t let the familiar design fool you. There are many navigations that have changed, so be patient and prepared to learn a couple of things.

Introduction

Stupeflix is a online video editing service which helps users create videos from photos in few simple clicks. Stupeflix offers two online utilities: Stupeflix Studio and Stupeflix TV. Stupeflix Studio offers various video editing features and allow users to create videos from a group of images. Users can upload images from their computer or import them from their Facebook, Flickr or Picasa account. Once completed, you can export it to Facebook or YouTube.

Usage

Using Stupeflix is really simple and straightforward. The service does not require users to sign up for a new account, but if you want, you can create an account or login using Google/Facebook login credentials. Please note that if you choose to use your Facebook or Google account to login, you must grant application access to your account.

If you want to create a new video, open Stupeflix Studio and click on “Make a Free” video button. You will be asked to select a theme of your video.

Now, simply upload the images you want to use in your video. You can even import images from Flickr, Picasa or Facebook. After the import, you can change the order of the images to appear in the video.

If you want, you can insert audio files or use Text To Speech in your videos. Adding text captions to different images is available as well.

You can even check the preview of your video before exporting it to Facebook or Youtube. After finalizing your video, just click on the export button in the top left corner. The service allows users to export videos in various formats and quality. For the free plan, users can only export videos in standard format for free but if you want it to be in high quality or high definition, you must pay for it.

Once the video is exported, you can publish the video on Facebook/YouTube. You can even share the video with your friends via different social networks and email or embed it on your blog.

Pricing

On free plan, there is a limitation that you can only save the videos in standard format and if you want it to be in high quality, you must pay a sum of $3 or to high definition for $5.

If you like the service and want more options like creating unlimited videos, saving videos in high definition and more, you can subscribe for paid plans which start from $29/year.

Conclusion

Stupeflix is a really simple and easy to use web application with many useful features which are not normally present in free software. The best thing I like about Stupeflix is that it does not require users to install any third party tools.

Do you know about any other tool which has more features then Stupeflix? If yes, please share with us using the comments section below.

Stupeflix

How does it work?

Animoto is really quite easy to use. First go the Animoto website and create an account. Once you’ve created an account, activated it and logged in, hit the big blue “Create Video” button in the top right hand corner. A large list of different styles will load. These styles basically determine how your images, video clips and text slides will be displayed. You can preview them by clicking the little preview link below each style.

As with many features on Animoto, some of the styles are limited to “Pro” accounts, while others are available to all. For the purpose of this article, I selected a style called “Simplicity”. Now that we have selected a style, the next few steps are simply a matter of selecting or uploading relevant photos, video clips, and music and arranging your slideshow.

Uploading images and editing the slideshow

The slideshow editor in Animoto is quite amazing in some ways, and a bit limited in others. One really great feature is that you can tell it to retrieve images from your Facebook account or a website address rather than uploading photos or video clips directly. Some people might balk at giving a company access to their Facebook account, so do keep in mind that you don’t have to use this feature, it’s just there to make things a little easier. You can, of course, upload whichever photos you wish to use directly into their system. You also have access to their stock catalogue, which has some great images from various different categories. As I’m creating a short video to go along with this article, I chose to use a few images and video clips from their stock collection.

If you wish to add text to your slideshow, you simply click the little “T” button down the bottom and type the text in on the right hand panel. Keep in mind that the top row of text will correspond to a much larger font, whereas the text in the lower bar corresponds to a sub-heading. Sometimes the main heading will show first, and then the subheading will fade in. The behaviour of the text is ultimately dependent on the style you selected in the first step.

As far as selecting the order of items within your slideshow, it really couldn’t be easier. You just click and drag images, video clips or text slides around to change the order.

In regards to video clips, unfortunately you cannot embed full-length clips, but actually need to select “highlights” from these clips. As with everything in Animoto, this is rather straightforward. It’s a matter of clicking on the video clip, which will load it in the right hand panel. Then you just need to select the length of the highlight and drag the little slider bar to select which segment of the clip you wish to use.

There are, of course, some other drawbacks with the slideshow editor. What I found the most annoying was that you could not edit the length of time a given slide was to be displayed. You also have no choice as to the transition used to display an image. It’s basically all preset by the style that you choose when first creating the video. Oh, and one other thing – you cannot use transparent gif or png files in the slideshow. This is especially problematic if you are trying to do anything with logos. With the video I created for my own website, I wanted to have the logo slide in on top of another image, which was simply not possible.

Adding music

Your options in this section depend on whether or not you have a pay or free account with Animoto. If you do pay, then you will have access to their rather extensive collection of music, with appropriate licensing to use in your videos. If not, you can always upload a music track of your own to use with the slideshow. As far as their selection – it’s pretty comprehensive with a wide variety of genres to choose from. For the video I made, I just selected something random from the Jazz genre.

Finalising

Now you simply select the playback speed of your video (1/2 speed, normal or 2x speed), type in a name and description, and hit “Finalize Video”. Animoto then sets off to do its thing and sends you an email a few minutes later with a link to the completed video. If you want to watch what I created with less than a minute’s work, then take a look below:

Wrap-up

Animoto’s good fun and can create some marvellous little videos from your happy snaps. To get the most out of this service, you’ll need to pay at least a small amount per month, although there is a free offering that limits you to 30-second videos (but you can’t use their licensed music selection, or download the video, or publish it in high quality). The cheapest plan is $5/month and it goes all the way up to $499 per year, if you want the ability to resell their videos to your own clients.

If you end up creating any videos, please share them with all of us below.

iSkysoft’s iMedia Converter is one of the few video converter that combines DVD ripping and video converting into one software. If you have a favorite DVD that you want to convert to iPhone compatible format, instead of using separate software to rip the DVD and convert the video, you can now do them in one step, with one software.

iMedia converter supports audio/video files of various formats and is able to convert them for devices such as iPod Touch 4, iPod Nano, iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, PSP, HTC and other portable devices.

When you first start the application, it will prompt you to drag your video file to the main panel. You can also load file from the DVD-ROM and ISO file.

Once you have added the video, you can choose the device/format that you want to convert to. After you have done the selection, all you have to do is to click the “Convert” button and it will do its job.

Other than the default conversion feature, iMedia converter also comes with an “Editing” tool where you can crop, add effects, watermark and add subtitles to the track before conversion.

Another feature about iMedia converter is the ability to combine several audio/video files into one single file. All you have to do is to load up all the videos that you want to combine, drag to reorder them, tick the “MERGE INTO ONE FILE” box and click the Convert button. As simple as that.

Other features include:

• Rip DVDs to popular video formats
• Optimized Presets for Video Players
• Convert Videos to various formats: MP4, MP4 AVC, M4V, AVI, WMV, MOV,etc. and HD videos like HD MKV, HD WMV, AVCHD(MTS, M2TS), etc.
• Remove DRM Protections
• Extract audio from DVD or Video
• Add Subtitle
• DVD & Video Clip: Split video or audio into several parts and you can just convert or join the specific segments you want. You can trim your favorite lines or music and extract MP3 sound track to create stylish ringtones for your phone.
• Remove Unwanted Scenes
• DRM targeted

Free Giveaway

iSkySoft has kindly offered their best product: iMedia Converter for free public download during the period 23rd – 27th Dec 2010. You just have to visit this site to grab this great software.

On top of that, for Make Tech Easier readers only, if you share this post around, you get to win a copy of the DVD Creator For Mac software. Together with the iMedia converter, this will be the perfect combination for all your video needs. We have 10 licenses to give away.

To participate in this free giveaway, follow the steps below:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter :

(If you have already done this, skip to step 2)

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: This free giveaway contest is now closed.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Wednesday, 27th December at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

More giveaway from iSkySoft: http://www.iskysoft.com/software-giveaway.html

Green screen (also known as Chroma key) is a commonly used technique for compositing two images or frames together in which a color (in this case, the green background) from one image is removed (or made transparent), revealing another image behind it. In Apple’s iMovie, this feature is readily available for your usage.

Why iMovie?

The main reason for using iMovie is because every new Mac has it, which makes it essentially free (save for a few cents for poster board, but we’ll get into that later) for all Mac users. Secondly, iMovie is easy to use and is effective for producing top-notch videos.

Keep in mind though, the green screening feature is only available in iMovie ’09. ’08 won’t do the trick. If you don’t have the newest version of iLife, don’t bother trying. All new Mac’s come with this though, so if you aren’t sure, open your version of iMovie and go to iMovie -> About in the menu bar to see which version you’re using.

Enabling Green Screening in iMovie

When I first started using the green screen function in iMovie, I was super confused because as much as I looked, and as confident I was that I was doing everything right, I couldn’t find green screen in the menu! There’s a simple solution to this problem, and I’m going to save you a ton of time here by cluing you in. Before doing anything, go to iMovie -> Preferences, and place a check beside “Show Advanced Tools“. This will make the cool options like green screening, picture-in-picture, and cutaways available. While they are labeled as advanced tools, they’re really easy to use. I’ll show you!

Steps to Creating Your Video

Now that you’ve enabled green screening, the first thing you need to do is decide on what background you want to use for your video. This can be a video or a still image, depending on what the purpose of your video is. 

Next, open iMovie, create a new Project, and drag it into the Project section at the top left corner of the screen. To adjust the length of the background to match the movie you want on the background, click the gear in the lower left-hand corner of the clip and select Clip Adjustments, then change the time appropriately.

Now you’ll need to film yourself to add on to the background. First, you’ll need a green screen. This is much easier than you may think. While you can go all out and either buy a fabric green screen or paint a wall green, you can also create one for almost nothing out of green poster board. Just scotch tape it onto a wall, and bingo, you’ve got a perfect, wrinkle-free green screen. Now, capture video of yourself doing whatever it is you want right into iMovie, by clicking the camera button on the left side.

Once you’ve recorded your clip, drag it up onto the background, and when you release the mouse button and the menu comes up, click Green Screen. Your recording will now be superimposed onto your selected background!

Lighting

Sometimes lighting can be tricky, but when working with lighting, remember these keys: you want the lighting even, and you want it bright. Unless you’re doing this for professional reasons, you can basically use any generic lamps you’ve got lying around the house. iMovie happens to be pretty great implementing green screen tech, and the Mac’s built in iSight is generally pretty capable, so you shouldn’t have too many issues. This is a generally accepted way to light a subject when recording for green screen:

If you do run into any shadowing problems, one trick I’ve learned that can work is to put a light behind the screen. This will help to bring some of the shadowing down in intensity, if it exists at all.

Wrap-Up

I told you it wasn’t too complicated! Have any questions? Let me know below and I’ll do my best to answer them. What do you plan on using the green screen technique for? Any tricks or tips for other users for those who have done it before?

Avidemux supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF. Tasks can also be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

In this article, we are going to show you how to:

1. Remove audio from a video file.

2. Remove the video component and save the audio part.

3. Add extra effects to your video

4. Resizing and reformatting your video.

5. Cutting a video clippings from a video file.

Download Avidemix from here.

Remove Audio from a Audio-Video file (Save only Video file)

1. In the toolbar, click on the top left folder icon and load the video file from your hard drive.

2. Click on “Audio” in toolbar. Select “Main Track” and then “None” to mute the audio.

3. Click on the Save icon to save the output.

Remove Video from a Audio-Video file (Save only Audio file)

1. Load a video file.

2. Click on the Audio option in the left panel and select your preferred audio format. Optionally, you can also click on the “Configure” button to change the output bit rate.

3. Now, click on the “Audio” option in the menubar and select “Save”.

Adding extra effects to your video

1. Load the video file.

2. Select the output file extension from the Video option in the left panel.

3. Still in the left panel, click on the “Filter” button. You can now choose the effects that you want, from labeling, color adding, noise removing, sharpness adding to resizing.

4. Once you are done with the effects, save the video file.

Video Resizing and Reformatting:

1. Load the video file and click on “Tool” at menu bar.

2 Click on “Calculator”. Select your preferred video format and size. Save the output.

Video Cutting:

1. Load the video file.

2. At the bottom of the window, there are two options: A and B. Click on A to select the start point from where you want to cut the video and B to select the end of the clip.

3. Click on “File” in toolbar and then select “Save” option. Finally select “Save Video” to save the output clippings.

The above tricks are not a good representation of what Avidemux can do, but they are sufficient for any novices to play around with their video files.

What other Avidemux’s tricks do you know? Tell us about it below.

Getting Started

Getting started with Kdenlive depends on your distribution. Precompiled packages are available for Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD, Fedora, and possibly others.  Their web site also includes a builder wizard that builds the dependencies and main packages automatically for you. Once it is installed, you should be able to start editing videos right away, but you will want to go through the Config Wizard to make sure you have all of the components you will need.

The Config Wizard will show you which video codecs are supported.  If, for example, you intend to make portable web videos in an mpeg4 format, you must have the right encoder. Ubuntu includes a guide for installing most of the standard codecs, and other distributions provide similar methods.

Importing Videos

If your recorded video is on a DV camera, you must import it using a firewire cable.  Click View in the menu and check the Record Monitor button. If it is already checked, click on the appropriate tab to bring up the window. It will ask you to plug in your camcorder and press the connect button. Ideally, this should work automatically. My experience, however, has never been ideal.

If it does not immediately detect your camera, you may need to adjust the permissions for your device.  Run this simple command as root or with sudo:

chmod 777 /dev/raw1394

The default setting in Ubuntu is for /dev/raw1394 to be read-only, so you will most likely need to execute the above command with it and similar distributions. You should now be able to view both recorded and live video from your camera in the Record Monitor window. Kdenlive relies on dvgrab, a product of the Kino project, to capture video. You should have it installed if you made it through the Config Wizard successfully.

At this point, you can begin recording.  Kdenlive can be configured to detect clips. Whenever it thinks a scene has been stopped, it will start a new clip. If this will not work for your video, you can setup time intervals for your clips or manually start and stop recording for each one.

In addition to importing from a DV camcorder, you can also record from a webcam or record your desktop with Screen grab. Additionally, you can import all supported video formats as clips.

Adding Photos

There are two ways to add photos to Kdenlive: individually or as a slideshow. To add a single image, click on Project –>Add clip. If you want to create an entire timed slideshow in a single clip, click Add Slideshow Clip and follow the onscreen instructions. Because of the KDE integration, you can also drag a photo from your file manager directly into the Project Tree. By default, each photo will display for 5 seconds. You can change this and the picture size in clip properties.

Editing your video

At this stage, you are ready to create a timeline. Once all of your clips are in the Project Tree, begin dragging them to the timeline in whichever order you prefer. It is really that easy. Clips can even be shortened simply by dragging the end of the clip to the left, just like resizing a window.

You can also add effects by simply dragging items from the Effect List onto your video clips.  The Effect Stack will show you which effects are enabled on your clips. At any time, you can use the Project Monitor to see how  your finished video will look. Kdenlive also has an Undo History so that you can see every step that you have made if you need to go back and undo something.

To add a title, click on Project –> Add Title Clip. You can add background images and shapes in addition to just text, or you can have the text overlay video.

To add audio clips, click Add Clip and then insert your Mp3 or other file as you would a video clip. There are special tracks on the default timeline just for video. You can also add audio effects.

The Finished Product

When you have your video edited exactly the way you want it, all that remains is creating the finished product.  Kdenlive has a DVD wizard built into it, but it requires DVDAuthor, an external program. Simply click on File and DVD Wizard to begin making a DVD.

If you intend to make any other type of file format, click the Render button. There are numerous file formats to choose from, as long as you have those codecs installed. For this example, we will choose Theora and then choose 720×480 format. Select Full project to export the entire timeline that you created.

When you have all of the settings you want, click Render to File. It will start creating your video and show you the progress. Depending on the size of your video and the speed of your computer, rendering can take minutes to hours.

This is only a brief introduction to a powerful video editing tool. While it is still under heavy development and far from perfect, it looks like a very promising video editing application. The Kdenlive site has documentation, video tutorials and an active forum if you want to learn more. I have found that nothing beats hands-on experience. Make a few test videos and learn all of the features, and after you have mastered them, you can begin creating your future award-winning productions.