subject: Digital Video Editing Software For Easy Movie Making [print this page] With the advent of Firewire (DVLink) or IEEE1394, video editing on a reasonably new PC has become a cheap and fun way to create beautiful looking videos. In addition to the hardware, users can choose a video editing software, based on their comfort level and affordability. The trick is finding the right software which will give you the best production without investing lot of your time. Every consumer video editing software comes out with the promise of simple, easy and fast editing.
Surely, everyone wants to have an easy-to-use software. This will help them to climb the learning curve of using the tool. However, tool is not everything when it comes to Video Editing. Video editing does however require some creative knowledge and artistic approach for producing the best looking videos. That is why you have directors and editors in the movie business. The director brings in the creative aspect while the editor realizes that with his/her mastery using the editing tool.
To begin with, it is quite possible to bring in all your video and assemble in the editing timeline one after the other and call that your master piece. But that will not be appealing your friends, family or neighbors. It is awesome to admire the Eiffel Tower for hours from different sides if you are in Paris. But it is not fun for those who have to watch it on TV. The tower looks the same regardless of which angle you are shooting from.
The key to video editing is to select the best clips that will add to the story that you are trying to tell. Once you select the clips, the next challenge is how to sequence and present them to the viewers. These two steps are the core of digital video editing. Although the user may pick the interesting segments to use, he or she may not be necessarily equipped with the artistic skills required to present them in an engaging way.
Users can easily fall into the trap of using too many effects and transitions assuming they are cool. And every video editing software comes with a number of effects and transitions ranging from simple dissolves to cheesy. Video Editing is an art form that has a certain grammar. For example, music videos are cool and engaging. They are cut to the beat and paced to the music. You do not know what works, but you can certainly say what is not working. It is one of the most difficult videos to edit. They are emotionally engaging and do not necessarily have to tell a story.
If your need is to create a complete production quickly and effortlessly, your best bet is to look for an automatic video editing software. One such application you can rely on is muvee Reveal. muvee invented the genre of automatic video editing. Currently all the digital video editing software packages which are worth their salt has a feature for automatic editing. But none of them create a complete production so elegantly as the muvee Reveal. One of the key problems with the so called auto edit feature is that almost all the time, the user is expected to make some final tweak, defeating the very purpose of automatic video editing. The philosophy behind the auto edit feature is to put together something quickly. And you go ahead and tweak it and make it better. This still does not solve the problem of automating the creative aspect of digital video editing.
muvee Reveal can help you tell a story in different ways. You can either create a music video that is nicely edited to the music, or you can create a simple video that focuses on story telling. There are only three steps and the resulting video is a complete production with no tweaking required.
First step is to select and sequence the visual media. This could be video or photos. muvee Reveal supports all the video and photo formats. The media panel of muvee Reveal is similar to a story board that you may have come across in a typical Non-Linear Editing System. (NLEs). The order in which the media are arranged will be preserved in the final video.
Second step is to select a style. Style provides a coherent theme for editing. You can think of this as a mood or theme or template. But in essence, it is the embodiment of the creative aspect of digital video editing. There are several styles to choose from. Each style will apply a unique treatment across your home movie. You can choose Kinetic style to give that adventure video look to your vacation. You can choose Pump It Up to provide that extra oomph to an otherwise a boring slideshow. If your need is to simply tell a story with just your photos and video, then you can also select the Classic Vanilla style.
Third step is to select music that will go well with your media or style. Styles in muvee Reveal are influenced by the music. They are intelligent enough to adapt the style to the chosen music.
In fact, the fun part is try different combinations of music and styles. Testing each combination takes literally a few seconds. In the case of traditional Non-Linear Editing systems, changing music half way through a particular project could be a costly affair. The editor needs to go through the entire video editing process all over again. In the best case scenario, the editor still needs to verify if the edits match the newly selected music and then apply the necessary tweak if needed.
The end production is truly marvelous and something that you will be proud to share with friends and family. Or even upload to an online video sharing site. muvee Reveal comes with several sharing options: You can burn to DVD, upload to YouTube/Facebook or to a private sharing site like shwup. You can also save the video to your iPhone/iPod.
Dont be deceived by the simplicity of the whole process. There are several personalization options you can play with. If you want to you can tweak it to your hearts content. No matter how much tweaking you do, the quality of the resulting video is always maintained. In my next article I will explain the personalization features of muvee Reveal. And I will also show the advanced features such as magicMoment, magicSpot, Captions, Voice Over and Style Settings. These are some of the features you may need once you get past the quick and easy movie making.
