Avid editor for free

[Gare]

I haven't downloaded it yet, but Avid produces the video editors that motion picture editors use. I believe that this is a DVD asuthoring package, but it's free and I think anyone who's into animation would like to create a polished portfolio:

http://www.avid.com/forms/freeDVRegDownload.asp

[Grafixman]

Thanks for the info, Gare.
Video editing is a completely unknown field for me. I know that Blender has a built in sequence editor. Also some softwares like Adobe Premier, After Effects, Virtualdub, Wax, etc. I haven't gotten around to creating any video, though. You have experience in this area. Perhaps you could share some insight in the process?

[-=Drifter=-]

i use an EXCELLENT editor just to take the commercials out of shows i tape on my computer and then add special effects, but this program does so so much more

it's made by Womble:

http://www.womble.com/

[Gare]

Hi, Grafxman--

Video editing is just as legit as any other art form, and just as deep and complex. I began when I wanted to compile a few year's worth of animation, and then kinda got sucked into it. Although doing fancy transitions with footage of modeled scenes is fun, I think I'm going to pop for a digital movie camera this spring and play around with compositing 3D footage into live action.

Basic considerations that go into editing are:

• Pre-production. You need to consider render dimensions. I used to use 320 by 240, which plays on TV okay, but I've been recently rendering out to HDTV format, 720 by 480, which looks mailboxy on the TV, but even with an anolog TV, this size looks much better.

• You need lots and lots of hard drive space and a DVD burner for producing videos and also for archiving. I wrote an uncompressed 4-minute AVI with sound, and it's 1.2 GB.

• Frame rate and field rendering. I'm using frame-based rendering, which is optimal for computer playback, while field-based encoding is for TV playback.. Usually, you render to 29.97 fps because this is compatible with divx standard encoding. And it's a royal pain to re-render footage to match it with 29.97 fps. A good video editor can re-render to specific footage timing; you shouldn't have to re-render in the modeling program. And fps has nothing to do with playback speed--you need a video editor to speed or slow footage. Occasionally, I'll render to 10fps if I'm doing an animated GIF; Corel Painter can write a GIF from an AVI directly. I usually write to AVI uncompressed, then compile down to MPEG for DVD authoring. A good editor can also perform non-square pxel rendering, for widescreen playback.

• Timing--this is the hardest thing to accomplish in a modeling program. Easing in and out of a motion cycle complicates calculation. I use the "organic approach". I count beats in my head, not seconds.

• Matching video to audio. A good audio editor such as Sound Forge can give you frame count; you work backwards--you do the audio first, then time your animation. BTW, you can get some really good, serviceable, and often looping audio clips in the closeout bins at Staples and clearance stores. I got 400 wav clips, from classical to rock to new age for $1 at Big Lots. Timing your animation to music is challenging; fortunately, Sound Forge can speed up and slow down an audio clip by as mush as 20% without noticable distortion and without changing pitch.

• Synching Poser/DAZ stuff to recorded voice works backwards as well; first the recording, then the animation timing.

• The exception is a sound event such as a laser blast or a crash. You do your video first, then synch the sound to the video.

I used Ulead VStudio for a few years; it's about $600, the UI is drag and drop, it comes with a lot of fancy transition effects, and has an excellent DVD titling feature--it really makes your presentation polished and professional in appearance. Then I got into After Effects (it was a gift and far too expensive for me to ever lavish myself with). Contrary to the publicity, AE is not the Photoshop of movie editing, not in the way you might think. Yes, it can do filtering and effects like PS, but edits are performed across time, which makes one's PS education only a minor leg-up when you try to tap into all of its power. After Effects is both an editor and a special effects "factory"; you can edit without using any special effects, but hey, that's no fun. In AE, you can do masking (matte work) if you first use a green screen in your modeling app--I think with the exception of C4D, modeling apps can't produce footage with an alpha channel. There just isn't a common file format. I used green screen to merge two different animations, then rack-focused between foreground and background. You can blur, sharpen, resize the animation frame (scaling an animation up is like scaling a photo up--it leaves a little harshness, but I've also discovered that you can speed up your animation rendering time by rendering without anti-aliasing sometimes--sometimes with moving pictures, depending on your scene anti-aliasing doesn't enhance the footage). You can also animate a slide show from stills--changing opacity, zooms and pans, and making interesting transitions (Photoshop Elements can do this too, tho' for $100).

And then they're the plug-ins; AE ships with several effects that can be used for transitions or just for cool effects. You can shatter a frame like a pane of glass to introduce the following clip, do 3D transformations, animate text for rolling credits, and even make new footage look old with sepiatoning, adding scratches, hair trapped in the gate, and dust, and irising the lens to create the appearance of an old movie projector whose bulb is dying. And you can fade these effects in and out. Third parties, of which there are over 60, make plug-ins that do absolutely breath-taking stuff. After Effects is drag and drop with manually adjustable parameters, you use layers (just like in Photoshop), properties are nested, and the only thing I still keep Vstudio for is DVD authoring/titling, which AE doesn't do. A well-produced video blurs where your modeler ends and where the editing begins.

If you do a lot of animation, After Effects is the tool of the pros for finishing your work, but I'm sure there are less expensive solutions. But to get back OT, if your work is rendering still scenes, save your money for modeling software upgrades and Photoshop.

My Best,

Gare

[Grafixman]

Gonna copy and paste this reply and file it under my "Things to do" folder, Gare. .
Reading quickly through it, I get the impression that it is a vast field to explore. This gets my respect for individuals who manages to create short movies complete with scripts, dialog, sounds and effects entirely on their own one big notch up.
I think I'll stick with stills for now....

[Gare]

Hi, Grafxman--

Indeed, going from a modeled scene to an animated one, and then leaping to a produced short is sort of daunting. But if you think about it, it took 364 sfx folks about a year to do King Kong, with over 4 terras storage and I have no idea how many daisy-chained boxes on render farms. You and I are individuals, not very experienced withe state-of-the-art CG production, and many of us don't own a spare machine to dedicate to rendering.

But there's hope if you have the drive. It took me an entire year (2004) to produce only a minute of finished footage. Last year, I was able to produce a minute a week. Better tools, increasing one's education (we never seem to have the spare time!), and just a basic yearning that can be traced back almost a century now--to make pictures that move.

My Best,

Gare

[Grafixman]

.
It's a challenge, alright.
We don't realize how much effort is put into making things until we try to do it ourselves.
I have to upgrade a lot of things before I'd even think about making a short feature.
I remembered some posts at www.elysiun.com about free or low cost renderfarms. Just submit the file to them and they'd render the animation or scene for you. Maybe that's an option?

[Gare]

Well, I guess as Einstein might have said, "Time=money". Elysiun appears to be a Blender forum, so if you use Blender, then they could provide the horsepower to get your footage rendered. I thought interestingly, that when Rhythm & Hues were asked by the producers of Narnia to throw more animators on the fire, their animation pipeline was so open that they were able to share data with ILM and Sony Imageworks. A lot of the data was motion captures and lighting captures (to match set lighting to the rendered scenes) while some was structured models with muscle layers and all that stuff--rendering was handled (I think, I'm not certain) by the respective companies; it's mind-boggling how they were able to reconcile different renderers' "trademarks" (for example, RenderMan produces a look that's different from, but compatible with Maya's native renderer) and then to match color temperature.

But a render farm doesn't alleviate storage space; if I wanted to have a render farm do my footage I think I'd have to ship several external HDs. And then there's the editing--you gotta compile the rendered footage.

I'm just doing shorts for the fun of it and mailing them to friends and family as hand-made birthday and Christmas presents. BTW, in addition to skimping on anti-aliasing, the models themselves can be simplified to speed up rendering. When stuff animates, sometimes the finer details are lost, the animation itself being the primary focus of the viewer.

My Best,

Gare

[staigermanus]

Thanks for the info, Gare.
Video editing is a completely unknown field for me. I know that Blender has a built in sequence editor. Also some softwares like Adobe Premier, After Effects, Virtualdub, Wax, etc. I haven't gotten around to creating any video, though. You have experience in this area. Perhaps you could share some insight in the process?

there's also Project Dogwaffle, since v3 it's had more and more frame editing. I made some funky stuff for clips you might for instnce use in making music videos.
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts/marlinstudios

however, no software is an island. I use VirtualDub for some things, AviSynth and Debugmode's Wax for others. Wax is rather remarkable, still free I think. Doubtfull it'll be that way forever. It's too good IMHO to not try a commercial version some day. Dito for Wink.

For some simple things and quick conversions I also like Quicktime Pro. Cheap enough and predictable.

there's also Adobe premiere and especially its little brother, Elements.

And then why not look for something commercial that's 1-2 years old? After all, it was great back then, when your PC was brand new, so if you're still using the same PC, hey guess what it's still perfect. There is one company I know that specializes on acquiring older versions of software and reselling that at very very low cost. Free shipping for orders over $45 in the US. There are a bunch of video and music related tools at www.purplus.com

[Hwy101]

i use an EXCELLENT editor just to take the commercials out of shows i tape on my computer and then add special effects, but this program does so so much more

it's made by Womble:

http://www.womble.com/

Is Wombie Free?