POLL: Which video software do you use to show your Xmas light animations on your web site?

[Guest guest]

I want to tap into the minds of folks here who have made videos of their animated light display last year for their web sites, to see which video production package you like the best.

The main items I am concerned with is:

* Adding text to the video, like MTV for example, to give credit to the song, and to list our web site.

* Smooth scene transitions in an A/B roll type format, where the video smoothly fades from one scene to another while the song keeps playing

* Can ouput in quicktime or windows media.

* Can control the size of the output screen

[Guest guest]

I use Pinnacle Studio, and absolutely love it. There is a free editing program included on most Windows computers that will do what you are asking, but it isn't as powerful and easy as Studio. If you want to try it out just look for Windows Movie Maker on your computer. I've used it and been able to make it work okay. It doesn't give you as many options as far as file type, size, etc. It will do fades and allows you to add text.

[Guest guest]

Marty Slack wrote:

I use Pinnacle Studio, and absolutely love it.

Hey Marty, I just purchased the same program but haven't got in to use it yet. Do you have any tips or time saving moves to suggest using Pinnacle Studio?

Thanks,

Tom

[Guest guest]

Santas Helper wrote:

Marty Slack wrote:

I use Pinnacle Studio, and absolutely love it.

Hey Marty, I just purchased the same program but haven't got in to use it yet. Do you have any tips or time saving moves to suggest using Pinnacle Studio?

Thanks,

Tom

There is a slight learning curve like any software program. Once you learn the program it is a breeze to use.

I do have two recommendations. First, the program uses an enormous amount of system resources. To make it work without a lot of delay I close down everything except Studio when working on things. I found a free program called Enditall that shuts everything down. Along with this it is a good idea to defrag your hard drive often. That too will speed things up.

The other thing is the connection from your camera to the computer. Many cameras have USB connections for video upload, but they are very slow and inefficient. I tried the USB route at first but had problems with the audio not matching the video, and some portions not capturing correctly. I would strongly recommend using a FireWire connection to capture the video. If you don't have a FireWire connection on your computer you can buy a FireWire card for fairly cheap these days.

[Guest guest]

Fantastic info Marty. Thank you!!!

Tom

[Guest guest]

I do a fair amount of video editing, so I purschased Adobe Premier Pro 2.0. I also have Adobe After Effects 6.0 and I love them. They have more features than I even know how to use. A bit $$$ but well worth the money is you do a lot of video editing.

[Guest guest]

I've used both Pinnacle 9 Plus and Adobe Premiere Elements, and I have to say I like the Premiere better. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but it can do a lot more than Pinnacle.

However, if you are going to do a basic movive, Pinnacle or Windows movie maker would be fine.

[Guest guest]

I think there is a lot of commonalities between the animated Christmas light hobby/fascination/addiction and digital video editing. My wife and I do a lot of video stuff on our computer, ranging from small musical tributes for retirement parties to full-blown 3 hour dance recital productions (shot with 5 camera angles). It was an easy (and fun) jump from that to light sequencing, as both require a similar patience and talent.

We use Ulead MediaStudio Pro for all of our video work. It is a lot less than the Adobe package, and so far does everything we need. I agree with Marty that all programs of this type truly require all the horsepower your computer can muster, so be sure to shut everything else down.

For those just starting out, Windows XP comes with a very capable video editor of its own called Movie Maker.

One thing to be careful of when producing video for the web is to be sure that the final product is universally compatible. Computer video files are produced with driver called a codec, which formats the file in a unique way to take advantage of certain compression and/or video quality features. If your audience cannot open files produced with that same codec, then they won't be able to play your video. Best advice here is to test your video file on a number of computers before you post it. Usually if there are problems, they will show up on the 'pristine' computers that don't have a lot of other stuff loaded on them.

Hope this helps,

Dave

[Guest guest]

I use Pinnacle Studio. I bumped up my memory to 1.5G and got a dedicated hard drive and it really improved the performance.

-Tim

[Guest guest]

Ok, looks like most people like Pinnacle.

Now, when you shoot the video, is the audio pumped into the video camera, or is the live video from the video camera pumped onto the computer while the audio plays. Not sure how or when is the best time to sync them up.

[Guest guest]

FWIW, found Pinnacle Studio 10 at Dell for $55.95 plus Free ground shipping.

Tom

[Guest guest]

tsmith35 wrote:

FWIW, found Pinnacle Studio 10 at Dell for $55.95 plus Free ground shipping.

Tom

That's a good deal. I purchased mine last weekend for $70.95 during a sale. It was normally $79.95.

Tom

[Guest guest]

jeffostroff wrote:

Now, when you shoot the video, is the audio pumped into the video camera, or is the live video from the video camera pumped onto the computer while the audio plays. Not sure how or when is the best time to sync them up.

Edit: I see now that I misunderstood the question. I'll leave my original response below but add this. When I video my display I have a portable FM radio next to the camera. The radio picks up the music from my FM transmitter. I do have speakers in my yard, but the volume is kept very low--not loud enough to be picked up by the video camera.

The audio from your camera is captured along with the video. From there you have the option of muting the original sound and dubbing over with something else, or adding sound to the existing sound. In other words, you can replace the music from your camcorder with a higher quality music file. If you line it up with the video nobody will ever know it isn't the sound from your camera.

[Guest guest]

That's probably what I'll end up doing. My video camera has a mic input, but I don't think you can use the line out of the audio card to your video camera.

I think that's too high a voltage level for the mic input on the video camera.

I know I have seen some of the videos done by other people here that you know it was right off the CD somehow. I'm just not sure how easy it will be to line up the audio from your CD to the video of your lights.