Making Videos with Xara and other software

[Bob H]

Gary,

I want to thank you for your great video tutorials as I am 72 and am moving to Xara Designer Pro x10 from Corel, and now see that I have a huge amount to learn!

Do you make your great TV Xara videos only in Xara Designer Pro x10 and Xara 3D? If not what else do you use?

Thanks!


Bob Harmount
pharmount@comcast.net[/B]

[Gare]

Hi Bob, and welcome to TalkGraphics!

If you're asking me whether I make the monthly video tutorials using only Xara Designer and Xara 3D, the answer would have to be "no". Xara Designer can produce Flash animations, GIF animations, and even export to AVI, but it's just about the best general tool for graphics, Desktop Publishing, and exporting to file formats other programs can use. It's the Swiss Army Knife of graphics programs, but it is not a video studio.

I use video editing software, 3D animation software, audio sampling software, audio editing equipment, and I also use Xara for titling a lot.

For video, you use the right tools for the job. For graphics, you use Xara. :)

Was this a good answer?

My Best,
Gary

[Bob H]

Hi Bob, and welcome to TalkGraphics!

If you're asking me whether I make the monthly video tutorials using only Xara Designer and Xara 3D, the answer would have to be "no". Xara Designer can produce Flash animations, GIF animations, and even export to AVI, but it's just about the best general tool for graphics, Desktop Publishing, and exporting to file formats other programs can use. It's the Swiss Army Knife of graphics programs, but it is not a video studio.

I use video editing software, 3D animation software, audio sampling software, audio editing equipment, and I also use Xara for titling a lot.

For video, you use the right tools for the job. For graphics, you use Xara.

Was this a good answer?

My Best,
Gary

Thank you!!

After I become more comfortable with Xara I would like to be able to make videos to promote my small (at home) advertising/publishing business and other ideas. What video editing software and 3D animation software do you use? (yes, yes I know that just having and learning the software/equipment is not going to get me your talent & expertise, but I would like to try anyway.)

Bob

[angelize]

I've moved these threads from the Xara Xone to this new thread here. I think this discussion merits a thread of it's own

For my tutorial videos I use a combination of Xara Designer Pro, FastStone Capture and Video pad. I do this on a very thin shoestring budget as it's just something I like to do. As my headset isn't the best I've been looking into Audacity for editing the audio tracks but I haven't really had the time to decide.

[Gare]

Hi Bob—

You are probably best off taking Frances' suggestions for hardware and software. The gear I use is quite expensive, I've been doing this since I was 20 (I'm 61 now), the migration between analog tools and digital ones at first were a little disoriented, and by the way, I'm not a rich person. Much of my equipment was earned as a barter or a professional courtesy from vendors for whom I'm written tech books. I'd never have been able to created videos were it not for the generosity of these vendors, for in my pocket is 13¢ and some lint.

I have moved, although not completely, from the written word in books, the educational videos, because the market fell out of published works in the early 1990s and still has not recovered. In that respect, the printed word is not dead (where else can we use all our fonts? ), but I don't see a soon or fast recovery for technical books due to the excess of free or inexpensive video tutorials all about the web.

I don't know what you plan to do with your interest in video, Bob, but it is not a sport for the faint of heart. Timing, audio equalization, music beds, the angle of cuts when you take the videos, these and a hundred more creative parameters can be done right and then you have a splendid piece of work, or they can be ignored, and your video looks like most of what is posted on You Tube.

That was a joke.

My Best,
Gary

[browj2]

Hi Bob,

Since you're on the Magix Xara site, then you may want to take a look at using the other excellent Magix products like Movie Edit Pro.

I use Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium (because of the added third party plugins) and I use the professional version, Magix Movie Edit Pro X6. I also use their Audio & Music Lab 2014 Premium for audio editing and sound cleaning amongst other things, and I use their Music Maker and Samplitude Music Studio for music, effects and audio.

Magix has just about everything covered. You can take a look at the Magix user forum. Look under Forum, All about Magix's programs, Movie Edit Pro and Video Pro for discussions, and also under Q&A.

Enjoy!
John

[Bob H]

Huge thanks for your thoughtful responses, Gary, Frances & John! I guess that I was just curious & excited about future communication possibilities after watching your great Xara videos. Right now I need to focus on more deeply learning Xara (Designer Pro X10) and transitioning from CorelDraw to Xara for my 2 small businesses. I digitally publish a (now) small advertising/public relations publication, and a law journal with web cites for each, out of my home.

Thanks again

[Gare]

Hey, Bob—

If you started using a computer back in the Bad Old Days of DOS, you'll remember an acronym that still applies now... GIGO, or "Garbage In, Garbage Out".

Which means you can be frugal if/when you become serious about video, but don't be so frugal that it compromises the product.

I'm going to renege here on just shutting up and letting other people make recommendations. I often do this, and both my friends are patient with me about this.

If you intend to use a camera, Samsung is a name that's giving Apple a run for its money, and they have a Flip-like video recorder for around $100, three models to choose from, the Samsung HMX series. The important thing when buying a video camera is: does it record interlaced video or Progressive? When you look at the spec sheets, if it says something like 1080p, that means it takes video that is 1080 pixels high (the width is usually fixed on inexpensive cameras at widescreen, which is cool) and that it takes full frame progressive video clips. Interlaced video is a pain in the rump to work with because it's only capturing half the pixels that are possible in every frame. It was conceived as a method of smoothing out the inherent jerkiness of video 30 years ago, and it's a cheap way to store massive amounts of video data digitally...um, by actually capturing half the data!

You could also try to find an Apple iPhone version 4, because it's cheap now that Apple released a newer version. I think Barbara (Mrs. Bouton) got hers for $200 online and the iPhone takes beautiful 1080p images and the sound doesn't suck, either. In fact, I ditched my Flip video recorder in preference to her camera (iMovie they call it) for the intros to the Xara Xone tutorials.

Now if you're doing screen cam and not live video, I'd recommend Camtasia, which is sort of the standard for recording screen motion. It's pricey for retail (about $300) and the reasons why I use it are: because my only machine has a lot of RAM, I can actually record at 30 frames per second at 720p or 1080p, which is a real mean stunt on a regular personal computer. Camtasia uses proprietary compression, but uncompressing it in any video editor is not a chore. The other reason I used it is I'm about 4 versions behind so it wasn't $300.

At the risk of tickng off Magix here, and they do make fine pro-sumer products, Adobe Premiere Elements version 13 is $64 on Amazon right now. In the Big League, you'll hear about professional video editors using one or more of these three products: Avid Media Composer (formerly Avid Video Pro), Apple's Final Cut Pro, and/or Adobe Premiere Pro.

My rationale for choosing Premiere Elements 13, the "kiddie version, but feature-packed, is that if you eventually get hungrier for more professional features, Premiere Elements' interface is just like Premiere Pro (more or less, your mileage may very), so you have not wasted any time on a learning curve. I used Premiere Pro version 23 when I first started getting interested, seriously, in doing a little video, and I found no features it was lacking. A logical timeline, easy cutting and cross-fading, a neat little program.

My Best,

Gary

[pauland]

..about the Apple iPhone 4.

No problems with what Gary said, but the iPhone4s is a better buy if you can afford the difference.

A comparison of the 4 and 4S said "The rear camera also has considerably better specs on the iPhone 4S -- capable of shooting 8 megapixel stills and 1080p 30 FPS video. The iPhone 4 models, by contrast, are capable of shooting 5 megapixel still photos and 720p 30 FPS video".

I have owned an iPhone4 and an iPhone4S and the 4S is considerably faster, though that's not critical.

As much as I love Apple Kit (and have plenty of it now), using an iPhone to transfer video to a PC is going to take a bit more fiddling in comparison to plugging in a USB cable or memory card.

[Gare]

Hey Paul and Bob—

My bad about the iPhone. Yes, the better of the two is the 4s and that's what Barbara bought. It's clearly a better product than what my Flip camera could produce (Cisco stopped making them 3 years ago), and as far as transfers go, I have no idea how complex it is because Barbara does the transfers, but I can say that she sends them to my desktop in minutes. It's reformatting that's a PITA, because they naturally only produce QuickTime files, and stopping the camera from shooting at 60 frames per second is a tad of an inconvenience. Which is my job, not hers.

Also it might be worth looking at the Polaroid POLC3 Cube HD , for $100. It seems to have gotten good reviews, it's intended to send your vids straight up to YouTube or other distro, and the camera actually has nothing to do with Dr. Land's Polaroid photography patents. Polaroid tanked a couple of years ago, and it leasing its name to everything from cameras, to earphones (which stink), to batteries. So it's not really a Polaroid product if name brands mean anything to you, but it's an interesting product.

BTW, the iPhone captures images that are really, really crisp.

-g