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jute

Free Video Editing Software?

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I'm looking for a free video editing program. I need something that will allow me to make videos consisting of a still image and an audio track for uploading to YouTube. In the past I used Vegas Video for this but I no longer have access to it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Err... You could use something like Fraps or CamStudio or HyperCam to make a recording of the still image while it is being displayed fullscreen on your monitor. Afterwards, you can import that recording into WindowsMovieMaker and add an mp3 file as the audio track. At the end you'll compile a WMV file which is ready to go on YT. ^_^

Hope that helps.

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MEncoder (part of MPlayer) can do it, and I've used this for every single still-image music video I youtube.com/partition36]have posted on youtube. I've got a simple python script that will do this for you. All you need to do is figure out how long the song is in seconds.

Python script (Assumes "mencoder" is somewhere in your PATH):

import os
import sys

fps = 30

if len(sys.argv) != 4:
    print "Usage: make-music-video.py imagefile audiofile seconds"
    sys.exit(1)

secs = int(sys.argv[3])
if secs < 0:
    print "Please pass a positive amount of seconds"
    sys.exit(1)
secs = 1 / float(secs)

filesexist = True
for each_file in sys.argv[1:2]:
    if not os.path.exists(each_file):
        print "%s doesn't exist" % each_file
        filesexist = False
if not filesexist: sys.exit(1)

mencoder_cmd = ('mencoder "mf://%s" -mf fps=%f -vf harddup -ovc x264'\
    ' -x264encopts bitrate=500:threads=2:bframes=1:nob_adapt:turbo=2'\
    ' -audiofile "%s" -oac copy -ofps %d'\
    ' -o output.avi') % (sys.argv[1], secs, sys.argv[2], fps)

print "Starting mencoder"
os.system(mencoder_cmd)
print "Video is complete, output written to output.avi"

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Acutally if you do have Widnows then you can do exactly that using Windows Movie Maker. Just add an image/photo, add a music track, then edit the video settings and change the duration length to however long you want (i.e. the length of the song)

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I use avidemux or winff usually. If I really need something special, I'll read the insanely long manpage for mencoder and use that.

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Virtualdub is the way to go. I made a couple of "1 frame" videos by loading exactly ONE still picture, and making the framerate being the inverse of the soundtrack's length (e.g. 1/300 fps for a 5 minute song). Fantastic size savings, and all bandwidth goes to audio ;-)

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jute said:

I'm looking for a free video editing program. I need something that will allow me to make videos consisting of a still image and an audio track for uploading to YouTube. In the past I used Vegas Video for this but I no longer have access to it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Just use Windows Movie Maker.

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kristus said:

Just use Windows Movie Maker.


If he's happy with producing just .wmv files and having no control over the encoding process, sure....

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Maes said:

Virtualdub is the way to go. I made a couple of "1 frame" videos by loading exactly ONE still picture, and making the framerate being the inverse of the soundtrack's length (e.g. 1/300 fps for a 5 minute song). Fantastic size savings, and all bandwidth goes to audio ;-)


That's a really smart idea for audio-only avi files. Thanks for posting.

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Maes said:

Virtualdub is the way to go. I made a couple of "1 frame" videos by loading exactly ONE still picture, and making the framerate being the inverse of the soundtrack's length (e.g. 1/300 fps for a 5 minute song). Fantastic size savings, and all bandwidth goes to audio ;-)


That's really clever!

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Nuxius said:


If it wasn't that WMV is one of the least supported proprietary video formats out there. Even cheapo players will play .AVIs and .DIVX files, but WMV, especially WMV9? No go.

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Maes said:

If it wasn't that WMV is one of the least supported proprietary video formats out there. Even cheapo players will play .AVIs and .DIVX files, but WMV, especially WMV9? No go.

Out of 4 different DVD players in my house, only 1 of them supports WMV files. That's very unfortunate, because all of my edited videos are saved as WMVs. But on the bright side, WMV is supported at places like YouTube and/or DailyMotion which are gateways to sharing with the world.
So, even though 3 of my DVD players can't play them for my private viewing in my home, I'm still happy about the fact that hundreds of people can see them around the world.

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