The Best DVD Editing Software

Footage Firm has done it again. After going overboard giving away royalty-free HD looping background stock footage clips, they have now released 10 brand new HD stock footage collections. Featuring clips from US and Europe cities and countryside, to exotic locations with paradise like natural scenery, these new HD clips are the missing tool in your kit to produce better and brighter media.

Getting the stock footage that you need for your project might be cumbersome or just too expensive to even consider, but these guys have already done the work for you, and as a promotion they are giving it away for a limited time only. Be it a commercial, short film, product presentation or music video, a piece of stock footage can give it that much more impact that you need.

These 10 collections come loaded with pieces of footage in both HD ad SD format and work out of the box with any computer and any software you use for your projects. They are properly categorized for your unique needs. You can even check out the sample clips from every collection right here.

As with the previous campaign, Footage Firm is giving these DVD’s to you free of charge, they only ask of you to cover the S&H expenses by yourself. That means that for less than $9 a disc you can get this $2500 collection. Hurry up though, they are only giving out a limited number of copies and if you don’t act fast enough you’ll be stuck with the regular price. So head over there now!

Footage Firm has released 11 new royalty free HD looping background stock footage collections. As an introduction scheme they are giving the DVDs away for free for a limited time. They are a total of 250 HD backgrounds, which come in both SD and HD formats packaged into a DVD. The whole set usually runs for close to $3000 (about $250 per DVD), but today you’re in luck.

In the DVDs, you’ll see that you can preview the clips on their dedicated pages. There are scenes like EKG screens, fire pieces, musical instruments, and sports gear. They’re all rendered in 3D, which as you can imagine, simply looks spectacular.

When I first heard of this promotion, the first question that came to my mind was the most obvious one: What’s the cactch? There is actually no catch, but we do live in a world where no physical product can be completely free. In this case you will have to pay the shipping & handling fees for the delivery of the discs. This is about $8 per disc, which doesn’t even compare to the real value of this footage.

Now I know that there are some people that will flinch at the sight of even the smallest of fees, but rest assure, this is the real deal. You can check around with other companies, and you will see that a discs like these, even from the cheapest of sources (which should also say a lot about the quality) go for $25-$50 plus S&H each.

So what are you waiting for? They started with a 500 copies stock, but by now I can only imagine there are but a few copies left. So get there already and claim yours. They won’t be around for long

ScreenCastle.com is a new service. It uses a small Java application to record your screen. Once you are done recording the video is uploaded to ScreenCastle as a Flash format video file (flv). They will give you a unique ID and several codes (embed, forum, thumbnails, download) to share it with your friends and the world.

Here is my first attempt at a ScreenCastle video:

NOTE: The volume is low. The cause is probably a combination of my computer settings and the Java application itself. I do not usually record audio directly from the computer, but if you do, be careful it is properly set up.

The service allows you to record audio from your computer microphone as well. It also allows you to move the recording window even if the recording has already started.

The whole process is very straightforward and the test video above took less than 5 minutes from opening the application to getting the publishing link. That’s incredibly fast!

There are some troubles with the quality, and getting an FLV video makes editing difficult, but all in all it is a great FREE service. As long as you have Java installed and enabled in your browser, you can do a screencast anytime.

Try ScreenCastle now!

Technorati Tags: audio, capture, download, embed, flash, flv, java, online, recording, screen, screencast, screencastle

There have been some very accurate complaints on the chroma keying engine of the AVS Video Editor. The AVS people will be notified of this and hopefully the problem will be fixed by their next release.

In the mean time here is a simple process you can do to get better chroma keying for your videos:

1. Open a new project for the video you wish to key in.
2. Make the main video timeline a solid color that does not appear in the video to be keyed.
3. Insert your video as an overlay that fills the entire frame and choose the color to chroma key.
4. With some less than perfect videos, due to the problems with the keying engine, some artifacts will be seen. Do not worry, they will be dealt with in the next steps.
5. Render the video in uncompressed format.
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 with the video you just rendered until it is properly keyed.

The final product should be an uncompressed version of your video, properly keyed in and with a solid background. You can insert this video into your original project and you will be able to chroma key the solid background easily and without unwanted artifacts.

This process still requires some fairly good quality videos for proper keying, but the final product is usually worth it.

It is important to remember to do all the rendering in uncompressed format and to give the project the correct size to avoid further quality degradation. This requires a big amount of free space for handling all the uncompressed version of the video along the keying process.

Technorati Tags: avs, chroma key, editing, editor, format, keying, overlay, render, uncompressed, video

With Movavi VideoSuite, you can easily burn any video to DVD to be played on a DVD player. To convert your video and create a DVD disc, follow the next simple steps:

• Step 1: Download and install Movavi VideoSuite
• Step 2: Run Create CD/DVD module and add original video file(s)
• Step 3: Choose a preset for converted video
• Step 4: Insert a DVD to your drive
• Step 5: Burn a DVD disc

Technorati Tags: avi, burn, dvd, flv, h.264, mov, movavi, mp4, mpeg2, mpeg4, simple, suite, video

This is a common question that many people have. The answer is somewhat simple. The best format to use for encoding when the final outlet will be the web is the h.264 format. Other options include AAC and MP4.

When exporting for YouTube or similar services, the optimal resolution is 640*480 or 720*480. Which matches the regular resolution used for the DVD format (MPEG2). In comparison, HD and fullHD are 1024*720 or 1280*720 and 1920*1080. The difference is whether or not the video is in wide screen format.

Depending on your software of choice the exporting process might be a little different. The important information to keep in mind is the resolution and the bitrate. A good bitrate for high quality video would be 3000 kbps.

The next question would be the FLV video files. Videos being displayed on the web are usually in the FLV format, which stands for Flash Video. A simple strategy for converting between FLV and h.264 or MP4 videos is to use the FFMPEG software.

Here is a simple example:

MP4 > FLV
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.flv

FLV > MP4
ffmpeg -i input.flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4

Technorati Tags: aac, encoding, flash, flv, mp4, video, web, youtube

This is a two part tutorial on the basics of Adobe After Effects by Sircedric88. It covers the basic features of After Effects and gives you a rundown on all the basic commands and how they interact with each other and your video.

Basics in Adobe After Effects Tutorial Part 1

Basics in Adobe After Effects Tutorial Part 2

Technorati Tags: Adobe, after, basic, basics, editing, effects, tutorials, video, youtube

JayCut is a new free web service that allows you to upload an unlimited amount of clips, music and pictures and then mix them into a clip. This is done through a web based editor. The final clip can later be uploaded to your MySpace and Facebook profile among other places.

It is a very simple process and the video editor is as easy as it gets. Just upload your clips, images and music, mix them in the editor and export. 3 simple steps!

Here is a small introductory tutorial:

The upload might be unlimited, but apparently the clip output is limited to around 2 minutes. This is not yet confirmed.

Technorati Tags: editing, editor, free, jaycut, online, service, video, web

Video Trace is a piece of software that allows you to create 3D models from a video file by tracing the object at any frame. The traced model is then mapped with the video itself giving the object a realistic look. The obtained model can then be used to modify the video in ways otherwise impossible to do.

The project is still in the prototype phase and in closed beta. The release schedule is still in the works, but with some good fortune it will not be long til you can get your hands on this.

The Siggraph paper describing the research side of this story can be found here: Video Trace (PDF)
You can see the official website here: Australia Centre for Visual Technologies

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Technorati Tags: 3d, acvt, australia, editing, manipulation, model, prototype, research, trace, tracing, video