question for seeso or anyone in the know...

NukeDOC

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ok im working on a new video project. im actually going to be using tracks through garage band, playing 5 instruments and singing 4 or 5 vocal assignments.

i basically want to do a video featuring me by myself... but in different clips, playing each instrument and singing each part. basically switching scenes throughout the song. kinda like seeso's entry to the bushman contest. well, im almost done with the audio tracks. but i was messing around with iMovieHD and i was just having major trouble figuring out how to get each clip to mesh with the audio.

basically, what im wondering is if i should just record each video clip as i go. one clip at a time. crop it, sync it to the audio, and lather rinse and repeat? or is there a way to just record 5 or 6 long clips, then just crop out the parts that i want, during the different parts of the song as i go.

i dont know if my question makes much sense. its hard to explain. i guess i just wanna know if i have to just have an enormous amount of patience to put this sucka together, or is there an easier way???

i dont have any special programs. all im working with is garage band and iMovieHD. the stuff that came with my macbook. been working on this project for two days now. and i dont want to end up spending a whole week on it... unless i absolutely have to.
 
Nuke, I would just complete a final audio track first. Then playback this audio (with a boombox or something) and start video taping yourself using the audio track. i.e.. Get a bunch of lip-syncs video parts together that you like. Remember that you don't have to worry about saving any audio from the video shoot, you will be using only your "original" completed audio track (file) in the final video/audio editing process. Then go into a video editing software of some kind. I use Vegas 4.0. Import your original audio file that you did all the lip-syning to along with your new video lip-syncing files. Then start cutting up these video clips and simply place them along the audio timeline that matches your lip-syn. (you can bump and nudge them very easily in the video application software to a perfect audio/video syn). Use a fast fade in/out tool, track crossover tool, or just blunt video cuts to get from one video clip to another. Once completed, if you have done so already, normalize the audio track to bring to sound level up to industry standards. Then export the finished audio/video out in whatever format youtube requires. Good luck dude, sounds like a fun project! e-lo...
 
thanks E! so it basically looks like ive got a bit of work ahead of me. oh well. cant wait to get it finished.

define irony: the first person to come on here to help me has "less nukes" in his signature. hahaha
 

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Nuke, yeah it probably should say... more nukedoc, more ukes! Let me know when you get it completed, I would love to view it. Also, I believe there is a similar concept video Aldrine did a while back of "Love Song" you should check out. Very cool and you get the added bonus of creating a little MTV video vibe with your final product. thanks, e
 
yeah i saw that. awesome job on that video. especially with the split screens for the dopplegangers and even allowing them to overlap each other (theres a scene where the headstock of the uke on the left overlaps the aldrine in the middle).

question for aldrine: how long did it take you to finish that video???
 
yeah i saw that. awesome job on that video. especially with the split screens for the dopplegangers and even allowing them to overlap each other (theres a scene where the headstock of the uke on the left overlaps the aldrine in the middle).

question for aldrine: how long did it take you to finish that video???

Hey guys. Aldrine and I pretty much shot the lovesong vid one morning, and it took up pretty much the whole morning. For the scenes with aldrine clones, i think we shot each clone going through the whole song twice: one wide shot and one close up shot. The thing with cloning is that once you set up the camera, you cannot touch it - at all, or you're screwed. :p

For the editing I think it took me a couple weeks, working on it as much as I had time for. Theres a lot of behind the scenes stuff that not a lot of people realize or appreciate (like smoothing out shakes and color correction for days) NukeDOC - I'm glad you caught that overlap thing - it took WAY too much time and effort. for that part, I used FCP's 8-point garbage matte and pretty much keyed each point for almost every frame of those shots. There are ways of doing it without so much manual labor, but the edges weren't clean enough for my taste. They still aren't super clean, if you look really close.
 
wow. so it looks like ive got my work cut out for me. i just finished recording the audio, but im not sure if im convinced its good enough yet. i might redo the vocals yet again.

im not quite shooting for the quality of the "love song" video. that was some good stuff. so basically, i guess i shouldnt try to make the audio perfect either.

remember the girl that won the bushman ukulele contest with "survivor"? thats somewhat what im basing it on. but with more depth, i guess.

it will be shot in my room. only one of me will be present at a time, so no clones. but each "identity will have a certain part of the room. i believe there will be five. so basically throughout the whole video, its just going to be blunt clip transitions to each identity throughout the video, depending on what instrument or lyric i want to visually emphasize on at that moment in the song.

so yeah, nothing special. this is the first time im doing anything like this (all because i finally decided to get a macbook). so trying to have some fun while learning a little bit about what this cool computer can do.

thanks for all the input! i cant wait to get it finished.
 
Hey bro. Sorry for the late reply, I didn't see this topic the last time I visited.

I use iMovie HD also. The toughest part for those kind of videos is getting the sync right. I've gotten to where I can do it pretty fast these days. I did the Bushman video all in one night, about 5 or 6 hours. What I've found that helps me a lot is the "direct trimming" feature.

Once you've got your clip cropped in the ballpark of where you need it, drag it into the timeline and see how it lines up. If the video is too early, you've got to re-crop. If it's too late, then simply drag the left end of the video clip in the timeline little by little until it syncs up. You can adjust the magnification of your clips to fine tune it easier.

I leave the audio in so I can hear it when it's exactly right. It's harder to sync when there's no audio in your video clip. After I get it synced perfectly, then I extract the audio from the video clip and delete it.

Look up "direct trimming" in the help files for more information.

Hope that helps. If you have any more questions, let me know.
 
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