["Stating the Blogvious"] Video is coming

[Spencer]

Sooo busy.

I've been doing masses of research on video tools and it's about time I blogged some of them.

Video editors; I've got Premier Standard but I wanted to find out what free stuff was out there. The competition was

Avid FreeDV
Microsoft Movie Maker II
AviTricks
Vdub (well just for cuts...)

Of these, avitricks is the most difficult to use accurately.
M3II is easy to use but just produces wmv.. Audio is difficult to manipulate (because it doesn't allow you to separate it from the clips)
Avid FreeDV has almost all the same features of Premier Standard but has limits on the number of tracks... 2 video and 2 audio. If you import a stereo file, you've used up all the audio. If you want to overlay an alpha title, thats the other video track gone. However for a free tool it's pretty amazing.

So my choice would be a combination of MovieMaker and FreeDV for the best free video editors.

However I'd still keep vdub and avisynth on my pc to convert file formats, stretch audio to fit and generally to tidy up the video streams before firing them at a convertor.

Speaking of convertors the free mpg encoder bsweet works ok but is terribly slow. I've just discovered HC which is a complete re-write. When the thing finishes rendering later I'll be able to judge just how much better it is... (it is quicker..)

A final tidbit... NTSC DVD's must have an ac3 encoded audio stream apparently else they won't play. The only freeware (paid is extremely expensive) available is not compatible 100% so I've got some testing to do there...

More on video stuff soon.

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Posted by Spencer to "Stating the Blogvious" at 7/13/2005 05:27:00 PM