muvee autoProducer - Automatic movie making

If you like showing off your home videos, but dread the process of editing, muvee autoProducer will make you look like a video editing rockstar with almost no effort. The hard part of using muvee is shooting the video. After you have your home video on your computer, making a movie is simply. Choose from one of 8 core movie styles, pick some music from your library as a soundtrack for the movie, add some titles if you need them, and let autoProducer work its magic. For any event that has a number of highlights, like a wedding reception, a child's birthday party, family gatherings, or prom, for example, muvee autoProducer will showcase all the good stuff from your video making you look like a genius. Several other applications have an auto-movie feature that attempts to do what muvee autoProducer excels at, but none come close to actually generating compelling movies from your video clips. If you've been hording video on a series of tapes, because you can't bear the thought of spending all that time building the perfect movie, downloading autoProducer is your chance to finally get the family off your back and deliver what will be some stunning moments on DVD or on your iPod. If the price tag for the app seems a little scary, autoProducer has a cheaper sibling in muveeNow, offering similar but stripped down features from the full autoProducer at a fraction of the price. [Windows 2k/XP/Vista $129.95]

Letterboxing Video for DVD Authoring

Chris writes, "We have tried Sonic and Roxio to transfer our digital camera movies to DVD. The movies burn to DVD OK, but when we play in our DVD player on TV screens, the movies are pixilated and not clear... is there some way to correct this problem? If I am understanding the 160 box in the bottom of the camera's movie screen window, our recording pixels may be set at 160 x 120 (compact). Any hope for making to big screen? Or is there a way for the video to only play at 1/4 the size instead of full screen - thereby hopefully keeping integrity of video?

160x120 video is never going to look good on a television screen. The resolution is simply too low. What Sonic does when it authors a standard definition DVD is size the video to fit at a standard full screen NTSC television (or PAL television if you're authoring a PAL disk). That means your 160x120 video is getting stretched to approximately 4 times it's original size. You're on the right track with attempting to play the video at 1/4 the size of full screen, but you need some additional tools to make it work.

HD-DVD Authoring for Home Movies

How to make an HD-DVD using standard 4.7GB DVD media or 8.5GB dual layer disks.

After shooting numerous hours of high definition video footage, I've been itching for a way to create some HD-DVDs. There are no HD-DVD burners on the market at the moment. And media seems to be in scarce supply. Sure, I could shell out $700 for a Blu-ray burner, but then I'd need to spend another $600 for a player that conveniently connects to my television (like a PS3, for instance). At least I can use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player with Windows Vista or my 360, and there's now an HP HD-DVD player in the wild as well. When I found out Pinnacle added support for HD-DVD burning to Pinnacle Studio Plus, I was thrilled. Better yet, they do it by burning to standard 4.7GB DVDs or to 8.5GB dual layer disks.

Playing Video Backwards with Pinnacle

Peter writes, "I have captured some video and now I would like to play it backwards and insert it into a film to give the appearance of catching a knife when in fact I threw it. How can I do it? I have Videowave II and Pinnacle Studio, neither of which seem to be able to do this. Do I need extra software?"

To the best of my knowledge, even the newest version of Videowave still lacks support for playing film clips in reverse. The latest version of Pinnacle Studio does support playing video clips backward, although the way you get there is a not intuitive. I'll also show you another way to play your video backward using AVISynth and VirtualDubMod to make a reverse clip compatible with any video editor.

Reverse a Video Clip and Play it Backwards

Many of the popular consumer video editing apps lack an effect for playing video in reverse. Windows Movie Maker has no method for playing video backward on the timeline. The Videowave editor included with Roxio Easy Media Creator has no video reverse mode. Using AVISynth and VirtualDub you can play out almost any video file backward, saving an AVI to import into your favorite video editor.

How to edit AVCHD M2TS files from Sony HDR-SR1 camcorders

Sony's new hard drive based camcorder, the Sony HDR-SR1, takes great images and should speed up video editing workflow by recording straight to hard drive. A handful of tools now work well for editing AVCHD files created with Sony's camcorders and the AVCHD camcorders from Panasonic. I strongly recommend using either the solution I regularly use, Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate, which supports a workflow optimized for end-to-end editing, including some great sound enhancement tools. Sony Vegas is another solid choice, which makes sense considering many of the AVCHD camcorders are made by Sony. Nero Ultra Edition ENHANCED is an additional solution for editing the AVCHD files, however, I find other aspects of Nero frustrating and don't use it for my own editing needs.

Make an Audio CD from DV Tape

David writes, "Is there a way to take my DV tape and put only the audio onto a cd? So that people can listen to the audio from the program in their car? I do the multimedia for my church and we are just begining to get into this."

It's definitely possible to take the audio from your digital video tape and put it on a CD. The process will vary slightly depending on what video editing software you use, but the basics of getting the job done are the same in every application. I'll walk through the process of using Windows Movie Maker to capture and edit the video here.

Put YouTube Videos on an iPod

Brittany asks, "How can i get YouTube video's onto my iPod? Is this even possible?"

The files YouTube plays back on their site won't play on an iPod directly, but if you download the files to your hard drive and convert them to an iPod compatible format, they will definitely play on your iPod. Depending on whether you have Mac OS X or Windows XP, there's are two different software tools that make putting YouTube videos on your iPod almost automatic.

Extract Still Image from DVD Video

William writes, "I have a HP PAVILION 783c Desktop. I would like to make still photos from home video on a DVD+R disc. I contacted HP and they said to contact you."

The process of capturing a still image from a DVD is essentially the same, regardless of whether the DVD is one you purchased or one you made from a home movie. The model of computer you have should not matter either. As long as your computer has a DVD drive the process of extracting a still photo from a DVD is relatively painless. There are a number of ways to grab still images from a DVD, but my favorite method uses one software application to do all the work.

Adding Music to Windows Movie Maker

May writes, "I have made a slideshow on Windows Movie Maker. I am trying to add music to it but every file I try to import says it's not supported so it can't be used. I am trying to use Windows Media Player files. I need them to finish this. How do I make them compatible or where do I find music compatible with the Movie Maker?"

Windows Movie Maker supports a number of file formats. Uncompressed WAV and AIFF (.aiff, .aif, .aifc) files are supported. Windows Media Audio .wma files and Microsoft's ASF format both work with Windows Movie Maker. MP3 files can be used in movie projects. Even the slightly more obscure .snd, .au, .mpa, and .mp2 audio files should all import into the Windows Movie Maker Collections without issue. Assuming the files you are trying to use are one of the formats listed above, they should work with Windows Movie Maker. Like anything else, there are a few caveats.