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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 8/02/2006 |
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There’s
a Hollywood producer in your computer, if you have Windows XP ... When I
returned from my Mississippi research trip earlier this month, I had hundreds
of photographs I had taken, and over a dozen interviews and little movies I
had shot with my new Samsung
Digimax PMP – I can’t call it a
camera ‘cause that’s old fashioned .. The first
thing I wanted to do was to put some of the photographs online for friends
and family to view, so I used a Photo Album generator program I was familiar
with just to get them online quickly. On the
videos I had shot, in the incredible heat and humidity of Mississippi, I had
some footage of the Mississippi John Hurt gospel and blues festival, various
performers who performed in various ways – meaning the had a lot of
delays and quirks in their performances, several interviews I had done with
people that had some starts and stops, and several videos of places, like the cemetery. I knew I
needed a video editor, or specifically an mpeg editor, and did a google
search. I found several freeware or shareware editors, and tried them out,
but none were satisfactory. I then looked at commercial editors and they were
pretty pricey. Then I recalled reading something about the Movie maker
program that’s a standard part of windows xp, and decided to check that
out. It was right there on my cluttered desktop, and I started reading
through the help, which is actually pretty good, I found the online Microsoft
moviemaker forum which is monitored both by other users, and Microsoft
professionals, and I did some more google searches to find other 3rd
party online help, of which there are many, some as good or better than the
online Microsoft help. So in
reading all this information, I was able to understand that Windows moviemaker
had the capability of editing my
videos, to take out the gaps and pauses, titling capability so I could add
titles, explanation screens, credits, etc., scene transition capability so
that you can do fancy fadeouts or wipes or page turns between scenes, special
video effects like shooting in that old time sepia color, psychedelic colors,
rotation and other graphics tricks, and sound capability so that you can add
a soundtrack to your movies. In other words, it had the whole enchilada. I started
working with Moviemaker, and found it pretty intuitive, and was soon editing
the videos I had shot exactly to the frame where I wanted to cut them, and
then I could add a fancy transition to the next scene. Another great capability is the
ability to take a screen shot of any part of your video, and then save that
as a new picture to be used somewhere. You open
up moviemaker, and then you start importing what you want, the raw video you
shot, pictures you want, and mp3 files you might want to use in the sound track.
Then you start editing and splicing, playing back what you’ve done so
far to see how it looks, and then continue editing until you’ve got it
right. Then you save it to your computer, and upload it to your website, and
then the whole world is watching; theoretically of course. I’ve
put an example of a movie I’ve shot using everything I’ve talked
about on my Raw Bytes website along with this transcript. I’m really
happy with moviemaker for making movies, and I went back and also used it to
put all my pictures in a slideshow with a sound track and titles. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2006 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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