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Download muvee autoProducer

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]

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.

The solution to the problem is to add a black border around the video to pad it to an optimal size prior to authoring the DVD. To do this, you'll need two tools I frequently mention here: VirtualDubMod and AVISynth. We're going to use the tools to create black bars all the way around the video to center it on the screen and force the DVD authoring software to maintain the video at it's proper size.

Required Software:

VirtualDubMod
AVIsynth

After installing both applications, follow the directions below specific to your video file format.

Putting Borders Around an AVI

If your source file is an AVI, you can force a border within the VirtualDubMod application directly (or with VirtualDub). Open your AVI file in VirtualDubMod and choose Video > Filters from the menu. Click the Add button and choose the resize filter from the list.

On the filter configuration window, leave the original width and height unchanged. Check the box to Expand frame and letterbox image, setting the new Frame width to 640 and the new Frame height to 480. Click OK when you are finished.

Save the file by choosing File > Save As from the menu. When finished open your favorite DVD authoring app and import the AVI you just created with VirtualDubMod and make a DVD.

Putting Borders Around WMV, Real and other Formats

Other formats, like WMV, ASF, MP4 and Real require AVISynth to add a border around the video. This will help you import those files, add a border, and save an AVI you can use in your DVD authoring software.

Note: If you need to add a border around a MOV file, you need to convert the MOV to AVI before attempting to add a border.

Open notepad and type the following, replacing C:\yourfile.wmv with the path to your video:

For 160x120 video use:
AddBorders(DirectShowSource("C:\yourfile.wmv"), 240, 180, 240, 180)

For 320x240 video use:
AddBorders(DirectShowSource("C:\yourfile.wmv"), 160, 120, 160, 120)

Save your notepad file as yourfilename.avs (where yourfilename is whatever you call the file).

If you need to convert a bunch of files, I included AVISynth templates in the VirtualDubMod download.

Open the .avs file you just created in VirtualDubMod. After you add a border around your video with VirtualDubMod save the file as an AVI. Import the AVI you just created into your DVD authoring software and burn a DVD that respects the original resolution of your video.

Here's a before and after show of the video with border in VirtualDubMod.

For more on using VirtualDubMod and AVISynth with video projects see these other tutorials:

Reversing a video clip to play it backwards
Convert PAL to NTSC with VirtualDubMod
How to Convert RMVB with VirtualDubMod

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.

The HD-DVD burning feature is a $50 upgrade to the existing Pinnacle Studio Plus package and works well for authoring in either Windows XP or Windows Vista. The first time you go to the Make Movie menu and choose HD DVD from the Disc Type menu, Pinnacle opens a window asking you if you want to activate the feature. You can also add it to an existing copy of Pinnacle Studio Plus directly from Pinnacle's site.

How to Make an HD-DVD with Pinnacle Studio

Once you have the HD-DVD portion of Pinnacle Studio Plus activated, it's relatively easy to make an HD-DVD. Click the Make Movie button and choose the Disc tab. Select HD DVD from the Disk Type drop down and choose a Video Quality. Based on my testing, you want to stick with Best Quality, which gives you 23 minutes of movie time on a 4.7GB disk and 42 minutes on a 8.5GB disk. There is an option to maximize movie on the disk and anther one that dynamically adjusts based on how much footage you have, but if you want your video to look great on disk, stick with Best Quality and edit accordingly.

The Settings page is where you might need to make a few changes. It's here you can set a custom bit rate for your video content, convert the video to progressive scan content as the disk is authored and choose whether to burn to disk directly or create a file on your hard drive and then burn.

The only time you want to use progressive encoding is if your content is already progressive (like if your camera shoots in 720p rather than 1080i).

Based on the test DVDs I burned, I highly recommend choosing the Safe mode for Burn Options. I made several coasters and had to go back and re-render my project, which made the whole process of burning disks take several times longer.

Menus and HD-DVD Authoring in Pinnacle

In my tests of adding menus to HD-DVD projects, the final DVD would not play. In each test, the video launched to the menu screen and selecting a chapter caused the video to error out. This leads me to believe that the menuing in Pinnacle Studio Plus is a standard def only feature. This isn't a show stopper for me, but at some point it would be nice to have a working menu structure for HD-DVDs.

Some tips on HD-DVD Authoring with Pinnacle Studio:

• Pinnacle labels the disk the same name as your video project, so if you want a meaningful disk name, choose your project name accordingly.
• The software does not automatically adjust based on the type of disk you put in the drive. If you're using a dual layer disk, make sure you set the software to dual layer or you'll still only get 23 minutes of recording time when burning the project.
• Don't check the box to re-encode your content. The software will re-encode as necessary and it's almost never better to re-encode your files without reason.
• Know your format and playback options before authoring - in general, HDV cameras record interlaced content. You should master your disk with the interlacing intact under most circumstances.
• If you recorded your video at 59.94, you need to decimate the video to 29.97 with something like VirtualDub or Pinnacle won't recognize the video footage

While this isn't the perfect solution of having an HD-DVD burner and actual HD-DVD blank media, Pinnacle's $50 add-on for HD-DVD authoring is worth the investment. The disks play in the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player both connected to a PC and to an Xbox 360 console. They are also compatible with the Toshiba HD-DVD players. One especially nice feature is support for playback in Vista even without connecting to an HDCP compliant display, which makes for a more compelling story for those of us who don't have HDCP compliant monitors yet. You can acquire both Pinnacle Studio Plus and the HD-DVD add-on direct from 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.

Playing a Clip Backward with Pinnacle Studio

With the clip you want to play backward on the timeline selected, open the Video Toolbox Effects lists by choosing Toolbox > Add Video Effects. (You can also do this by clicking the video camera icon above the timeline and then clicking the power plug icon, but the menu gets you there faster)

In the Standard RTFX category of Video Effects, choose Speed and click OK.

On the Speed effect configuration, check the box next to Reverse. You can speed up or slow down the reverse playback by changing the Speed percentage.

Your video should now play backward on the timeline.

Read how to play a video backwards using AVISynth and VirtualDubMod. (This method works for any video editor, including Windows Movie Maker and Roxio Easy Media Creator).

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.

The following method will work for almost any video that plays back in Windows Media Player, including WMV, MP4, and most AVI files. Your mileage may vary depending on which codecs are installed, but installing ffdshow certainly can't hurt.

Recording video straight to hard drive using an AVCHD camcorder should speed up your video editing workflow. It is not without some frustration in the editing process. Two years after the first AVCHD camcorder hit the market, 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 Pinnacle Studio HD or Sony Vegas

The Sony Vegas option probably makes the most 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. Pinnacle wins on ease of use, but it's more limiting than Vegas if you're willing to learn the interface.

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.

After capturing the video with Windows Movie Maker, add the video to the editing Timeline on the Audio/Music track. Keep in mind that the maximum length for Audio CDs is 72 minutes, so if your audio is longer, you may want to split the video into two files.

From the menu, choose File > Save Movie File. Select My Computer from the list of options presented in the Save Movie Wizard.

Name the file and choose a location to save the file.

Select High Quality Audio (160 Kbps) from the list of Other Settings.

After Windows Movie Maker finishes exporting the audio, open the audio file in your favorite CD burning application and burn an Audio CD.

Additional Notes on Capturing Audio from a DV tape

If you want to save yourself some time in processing the audio, you could record the audio directly from the digital video camera's headphone line out with a computer or external audio recorder. This would give you immediate access to the audio file, without needing to wait for the computer to capture everything on the DV tape. Then simply open the file in an audio editor (like Audacity), edit the audio, save the file and burn it as an audio CD.

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

You can't play YouTube videos on an iPod without converting them first. If you download the YouTube videos to your hard drive, you can convert the videos to an iPod compatible format. If you have either Mac OS X or Windows you can use the same free software to convert YouTube videos for your iPod.

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.

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.