Windows Movie Maker, arrgh! (First time questions...)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Hi all, I'm editing my first vid at the moment, and, as so many naive first-timers, I'm trying to use Windows Movie Maker for it. Bad, bad idea, I know, but it's a bit late to change the program now, as the vid is almost done. So, I have a few questions:

1.) Ghost frames. Ghost frames, arrrgh. What do I do about them? Specifically, what do I do about them if they occur at the beginning or end of a clip that is so short that I can't afford to cut any more from it? If WMM allowed me to cut single frames, I'd do that, 'cause a single frame wouldn't shorten the clip noticeably and screw up the timing etc. However, WMM only allows cuttings bunches of seven frames, and that *is* noticeable. Is there, perhaps, a freeware/shareware program I could use to remove single frames from my video, or something like that? (I.e. save video in WMM in as high a quality as possible, import into another program, remove ghost frames, save again in highest possible quality, re-import into WMM and add the music track? Or would that cause too much degradation, with all the saving and importing?)

2.) Aspect ratio. My source material is widescreen/16:9 but the vid doesn't seem to come out that way. Instead, it gets treated like a fullscreen vid by all the more common players. Can I do anything about that?

3.) Image 'hiccups'. WMM adds these strange little visual 'hiccups' in some clips. At first I thought it was a processing error, so I removed the clip and put it in again, but after rendering the vid anew the hiccup was there again, as well, in exactly the same place as before. Anything I can do about that?

I think that's it for now...

Comments

[les342.livejournal.com]

I'm not usually very good at explaning things, but I'll try. Let me know if I'm being clear or not. I don't know how to help with 1 or 3, but for 2, here's what you do. First you at the top of the screen, click on "Tools", then once that menu opens up. click "Options". There will be a menu with three tabs. Click on the one that says "Advanced". There will be several diffrent things that you can change. The one you want is in the middle, under Video properties. Just click where it says 16:9, then click Okay to apply the new setting.

[tallulah71.livejournal.com]

If I'm remembering correctly, clicking the zoom tool on the timeline to maximum, allowed for the stray frame to be cut, without the lose of too many other frames.

Nope.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I'm already at maximum. I've also heard from another vidder that WMM only allows for cutting of seven-frames packets, not single frames. Even at maximum zoom I can't even *see* the ghost frames in the project file - likely because they're in the middle of a bunch of seven frames. I can only see them when I render the vid.

It's bloody annyoing.

Re: Nope.

[tallulah71.livejournal.com]

Hum. Then your ghost frames must be something different than what I'm thinking of. A stray frame would have to be at the end. Are you using the original WMM or WMM2?

Re: Nope.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I think it's version 2.

The stray frames *are* at the end or at the beginning of the clips, but they're invisible in the unrendered video, i.e. in the project file itself when I play it. I have to render the vid to even see them, and I *can't* remove a single frame becuase WMM does not allow cutting single frames. The smallest unit it can deal with is seven frames. :-(

Hence my question about other, alternative programs for removing those single stray frames.

Ghost Frames

[lostitforever.livejournal.com]

I personally dont use WMM, but I would imagine you could do this there anyway. you cut the clip from all ghost frames, right? then in order to make it fit in correctly time-wise, you change the playback speed. So, you cut the seven frames, but then slow down the rest of the short clip, and it shouldn't be too significant.

Its what I do, anyway, and it works well. I hope that was helpful.

But I *can't* cut the ghost frames, that's the problem.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I can only cut a whole *bunch* of frames.

And changing the speed is impossible in WMM, I think. Anyway, if I've timed the movement in the clip exactly to the music I wouldn't even *want* to change the speed, as it would screw up the timing.

Re: But I *can't* cut the ghost frames, that's the problem.

[kathynancygirl.livejournal.com]

what about adding a several frames at the begining and then trying to cut (like adding 4 frames and then taking away those 7)

(I don't use WMM)

Re: But I *can't* cut the ghost frames, that's the problem.

[used2bvader.livejournal.com]

Well there's 2 options as I see it;
1 do a reverse fade for the specified time
2 recut the pieces choosing the next frame over that you can see and hope it doesn't make too big an impact.

or the third option would be Adobe premiere

[tazey.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with WMM and the types of files you're using so this is more general.

For the hiccups, I'd suggest re-encoding the faulty clip if possible. If it's an avi, you can use VirtualDub.

For the stray frames. If there aren't more than 1 or 2 of them, I'd use Virtualdub again (provided your file is an .avi), strip the sound in a .wav file, cut the stray frames out of the vid and re-encode the whole using the saved .wav file as the sound source for the re-encode. This is not something I've done before so I'm not sure this would actually work.

The source of your stray frames is probably codec based. Most codecs encode by using one image as the frame of reference for the following group of images. The size of said group depends on the codec itself and the encoding parameters. It might explain the seven-frames minimum. (Or I could totally be talking out of my ass, *g*). I use Huffyuv in Premiere because it encodes each frame on its own and therefore makes Premiere less likely to crash or act up. The downside is that it's very greedy in hard disk space.