Season 471 - Click and wind on

There is the Audio/Video subforum in the Music Related part of the forum, where there are lots of helpful people I am sure. Not that there is not a lot of advice to get right here in the Seasons :)
A lot depends what you are looking for in the software.

I record using the Reaper DAW, and it supports video editing right there in the music editing software. It is also one of the cheaper DAW's at around $50. One time pay, No subscribtion. It works pretty well for me.

My desktop is old enough to have Windows Movie Maker on it, since I upgraded it to windows 10 from a previous version. Movie Maker cant do much, but it is stable and renders in good quality.

I tried out some free editors. OpenShot was VERY unstable on windows last time I tried it. ShotCut Video Editor was also too unstable for my taste, chrashes every now and then, and the render quality was not consistent. I also tried using Blender for video editing. It is designed for animation, but you can edit video in it. It was quite cumbersome to learn, a lot of difficult processes, but it was stable and got the job done.
There are free software that is state of the art if you take the time to learn it, but that can be a steep curve. I never tried the most advanced ones.

I did some research before discovering that Reaper would fullfill both my audio and video needs, trying to find out which affordable payed video editor was most recommended. I believe that PowerDirector is a strong contender. I also think that some other seasons participants use PowerDirector in some form.

Also a lot of people like to edit on their phone with various apps.

Oh wow didn't realise Reaper had video editing! I've been using that for the last month or so and really like it, might have a look into that.

I can definitely recommend Power Director though. I used the free version on my Android tablet for a long time and it did everything I needed it to, although it put a watermark on my videos. I recently made the switch to the paid version on the PC and it's brilliant. So many options, great library of stock video, and very intuitive.

If anyone else reading is using Android, I can recommend N-Track as a DAW for Android devices. Fairly intuitive to use, has virtual instruments and an onscreen keyboard and a really nice drum programmer. Can export to mp3 in the free version, for 99p a month you get a few extra options too.
 
There is the Audio/Video subforum in the Music Related part of the forum, where there are lots of helpful people I am sure.

Thanks - I will chk that out.


I record using the Reaper DAW, and it supports video editing right there in the music editing software. It is also one of the cheaper DAW's at around $50. One time pay, No subscribtion. It works pretty well for me.

I did some research before discovering that Reaper would fullfill both my audio and video needs, trying to find out which affordable payed video editor was most recommended.

Thks - I have reaper installed for a while now as a demo, but was having a hard time learning it. Spent a few hours on it, and think I am catching on. Able to mix midi and audio trax this evening, so that's progress.
I had no idea it could handle any video. I will take this to the A/V subforum now. Thanks
 
Good luck with the video editing!
I would say that video editing in Reaper is not super versatile or intuitive, but way better than the freeware I have tried.
You make an extra track for each video, then drag and drop your videos into them. Align with the audio. To do this accurately disable snapping when doing it. Then enable FX for those tracks. Among the video processor effects there are options to tile the videos into an array, or use the horisontal wipe I like to use, where it splits the screen and uses the left side from one video and the right from the other. You can also fade between the videos by fading the track on top, if the setting for this is on. There are also lots of other settings I havent tried.
It does NOT have an editor to put in text in the video. You will need create pictures of the text and put in a track on top of the video. This track should in the video processor plug in be set to "Image Overlay". The same track can also hold your thumbnail if you want it in the video. I use the Gimp software for using thumbnails etc.
Oh, and when rendering, remember to change the output from wav to a video format :)
There are also a lot of in depth youtube toturials.
 
Good luck with the video editing!
I would say that video editing in Reaper is not super versatile or intuitive, but way better than the freeware I have tried.
You make an extra track for each video, then drag and drop your videos into them. Align with the audio. To do this accurately disable snapping when doing it. Then enable FX for those tracks. Among the video processor effects there are options to tile the videos into an array, or use the horisontal wipe I like to use, where it splits the screen and uses the left side from one video and the right from the other. You can also fade between the videos by fading the track on top, if the setting for this is on. There are also lots of other settings I havent tried.
It does NOT have an editor to put in text in the video. You will need create pictures of the text and put in a track on top of the video. This track should in the video processor plug in be set to "Image Overlay". The same track can also hold your thumbnail if you want it in the video. I use the Gimp software for using thumbnails etc.
Oh, and when rendering, remember to change the output from wav to a video format :)
There are also a lot of in depth youtube toturials.

That sounds like a bit of a pain. Only advantage I can think of to do it in Reaper as opposed to exporting the audio to a specialised video editor would be if you could record the video direct into Reaper (something which would make multitracking a lot less painful)

Is that possible?

(sorry for derailing the thread Steve)
 
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That sounds like a bit of a pain. Only advantage I can think of to do it in Reaper as opposed to exporting the audio to a specialised video editor would be if you could record the video direct into Reaper (something which would make multitracking a lot less painful)

Is that possible?

(sorry for derailing the thread Steve)

Which part sounds like a pain? The text thing is only annoying if you want text in the video, which I usually dont want. For the things I want to do it is not that bad.
Video cannot be recorded directly into Reaper. I do consider it an advantage that I dont need to make an export of the audio, and I find it easy to align the stuff in Reaper. But this is comparing to the Audacity/Movie Maker combo I used before.
Anyway, I can't argue that you can't get a smoother flow and better result from a paid dedicated video editor.
My cheap side just like to compare it to the freeware I have tried and think of the fact that I allready payed for it. With those things in mind I am very happy about it.
 
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We are down to the last 24 hours (well, 21 actually), so I'm sure Ralf will be along soon. Some lovely entries have come in over the last few days, but Joko's contribution is a warning to us all - our videos may be around longer than we want them to be...
 
I recently heard this fine song "Aperture" by the band Sleeping at Last, unknown to me until yesterday. The original version was written by the band's Ryan O'Neal, and features the ukulele prominently. I quickly fell in love with the song, and hope I can do it justice here. Ryan writes about the song, ukes, and song writing process on his blog link below, which includes the original song at the end: http://www.sleepingatlast.com/blog/aperture-how-it-was-made.

 
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It's close to evening over in Hawaii. And almost bedtime here in Oregon. Anyway, here's a photographic song by Spoon.



Have a good one, all!
 
80 minutes to midnight in Hawaii, and I will be back later to catch up with the overnight arrivals, and any last minute additions.
 
All done here folks. Thanks to all who took part. I will be back later with the round-up and a prize.
 
Thanks for this week, Steve. It was a challenge. There are lots of songs about photos, but most of them don't have "photo" or "camera" in the title. As Brian put it during the open mic, there wasn't a lot of low-hanging fruit. When you posted the Season, I did a Google search for songs about photographs. One of the songs that came up was by a band I'd never heard of, called Bishop Allen. I found songs I was more interested in playing this week, but I'm posting their video here because one of the band members is playing a ukulele in it.

 
Thanks Steve. This was a lot of fun.
Thanks to members who left comments on my Youtube. You are an encouraging group.
Thanks for the editing tips too, I've learned a lot about my setup this week as a result of participating here.

.... PS My new Uke arrived yesterday.
 
Thanks to YorkSteve for the frame, and for an excellent theme! Here's the frame with a picture in it, a little drawing of Jones the Steam sitting in Ivor the Engine that I just happened to get off redbubble last week, which is conveniently the right size and seems appropriate:

sotu471frame.jpg

(If you don't know what those things are, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnrTwrCT1CU&list=PLm51WyIcZZhpyz690tllPmXkk43_K7FT3 :))
 
Thanks to YorkSteve for the frame, and for an excellent theme! Here's the frame with a picture in it, a little drawing of Jones the Steam sitting in Ivor the Engine that I just happened to get off redbubble last week, which is conveniently the right size and seems appropriate:

View attachment 132655

(If you don't know what those things are, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnrTwrCT1CU&list=PLm51WyIcZZhpyz690tllPmXkk43_K7FT3 :))

That was fast - how come my post never arrives that quickly?

Glad that Ivor fits in the frame.
 
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