vidding tutorials, osx freeware

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

I taught myself to vid with iMovie (hey, it came free with my computer), but iMovie, as far as I've been able to figure (by mucking around at random), is rather limiting and frustrating. I need a new program, and possibly some tutorials that explain not only what various features do, but also what those words they've just used to describe them mean (I learned by mucking, not word-using). I've currently downloaded HyperEngine-AV on my computer, and it looks like one could do more with it, but my "mucking around" has only caused the program to crash in many delightful ways, and it has a tendency to play frames it claims (when I look on a frame-by-frame basis) are not there. So I'm lost, completely and utterly lost. If someone could recommend some programs (free or dirt cheap -- I'm just a poor college student) or tutorials, I'd be eternally grateful (but in a non-stalkerish fashion). Help, pretty please?

-Third Mouse

Comments

[barkley.livejournal.com]

iMovie is very good for it's price (i.e. free with your computer *g*.) It just takes a lot of mucking. Not to say that it isn't limiting, because it is, but if you want less limiting, then you might have to go up the monetary scale. Final Cut Express is good. It's $300, but you can sometimes get good deals on ebay.

Other than that, I'd say subscribe to the iMovie list on yahoogroups and read and/or ask specific questions about what you want to accomplish.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iMovie-List/

Or even ask specific questions here about what you want your software to do. (Well here or in mac_vidding_101.

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Do you know of a good tutorial, or explanations of the terminology? I have the feeling that knowing what you're getting into first instead of poking about in the dark is the way sane people do it, and I do have occasional aspirations towards sanity.

[barkley.livejournal.com]

I think most people just poke. They say, "I wanna do this" and then either ask how to do something or google until they figure out how. What sort of things do you want to know? (FTR, I made about 12 vids on iMovie. It can do a lot if you poke around.)

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

As far as I've figured so far you can't overlay one clip with another, except in cross fades. Is this correct? I'm tempted to try something with extra projects using really slow cross fades to simulate the effect. I've managed to deal with still clips and titles behaving incorrectly this way, making separate projects in which I compile them by brute force (frame 1 + frame 2 + frame 3...) then import the created movie into my original project. It seems like there should be an easier way to do this (okay - the titles are generally okay enough on their own, and the program thinks it makes stills by itself, but then reality intrudes).

Some basic things I'd like to be able to do, if possible, is overlays, and editing the source material itself (such as horizontally flipping clips, or blocking out portions of them), God help me if I have to take it frame by frame to a paint program, because I know if necessary eventually I will.

[barkley.livejournal.com]

The last version of iMovie I used was iMovie3, so some of my info might be out of date. But as far as I know, iMovie itself does not support dual video tracks and so you can't really do overlays (It's the one big reason I switched to FCE.) (And, yeah, I've been there and done that with making mini movies on one or two effects and then reimporting them back into the main vid so I could put another effect on it.)

You could try playing around with Quicktime Pro to do this. I know you can have dual video tracks and change transparency levels on there.

There might be a plugin you can use. A quick google search has turned up this:
http://www.stupendous-software.com/Stupendous/MasksCompositing/Pages/index.html

I thought you could horizontally flip clips (mirror maybe?) but I don't think it comes with a built in masking function. (QTPro might help with masking.) So, yeah, if that's the kind of stuff you want to do it will either be very labor intensive or it will cost $$ in order to upgrade to something like Final Cut that handles it easily. That's the trade-off.

iMovie Tutorial

[surranndie.livejournal.com]

As one who has used iMovie to not only make a number of decent (I hope) vids, but also teaches iMovie to students, Apple has a pretty decent video tutorial that will show you the basics (http://www.apple.com/support/imovie/tutorial/). From there, it does take a fair amount of mucking about.

Feel free to contact me off-journal if you want added assistance.