Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion FoLC Productions Editing program

I'm curious. What program do you use for making your music videos? Or, more precisely, what program do you use to capture your footage to use in the video.

I've used Windows Movie Maker before to business project videos, but I've never wanted to capture something that wasn't readily available to dump in there.

Anybody?

If the footage you want is on a tape, you need a cature device to connect it to your computer. If the footage is on a videorecorder, you have to connect it directly to your computer (most often, you can do it by USB). And then, you can capture the video using your editing software. Each editing software has his own way to do it, so you just need to read the help file of your program.

If the footage you want is on a DVD, you have to ripp it. There is a lot of different programs for that (most people uses DVDShrink, but I think DVDShrink is more complicated, and more long, and with less options - that's just my opinion of course), but I think Fair use is one of the most simple, and one of the ones that have the more options. And it's a freeware!

Here's a little tutorial on how to ripp DVD with Fair Use

When you open Fair Use, you have that window:


You name your project and you choose a place on your harddrive to save it with the button "browse", and then you click on Next (that's the button "Suivant" on my capture because I'm french), and a new window appear:



You choose your DVd Drive. For me, it's the F:
Then you click on OK, and then a third window open, with the contents of your DVD:



This image can be scary, but don't be afraid. For my exemple, I choose the last DVD of the second season of Lois and Clark. I explain what you see on the picture:
- the line with unknown information and the line without information are the menus of the DVD.
- the line selected on the picture is the entire video of the DVD put all together on one file.
- the three lines below are the three episodes of this DVD (as you can see with the duration)
- the last two lines are the special features of the DVD

So, when you're here, you choose what you want to ripp: the entire DVD or only an episode. You select what you want to ripp and you click on "Next" (that's still "suivant" on my pictures), and the program start to extract the .VOB files, etc... on your harddrive (For my exemple, I choose to ripp the special features about the FOLCs). When he do it, you have that window:



and when it's over, you have that window:



As you can see, you have a video preview. The video doesn't play, but it's for you choose to change some settings if you want to. I advice you to let all the settings as the software made them and just click on next. But I explain to you anyway what the settings are:
- the box named "frame range" at the left of the video preview: you can use it to indicate to what frame of the video start the ripp and to what frame of the video end the ripp in case you want only a scene and not all the video. To know precisely the number of the frames, you use the curser just below the movie preview, and the number of the frame of the pictures in the preview is indicated at the right.
- the box named "cropping region": you use that if you don't want to keep the entire image but just a part of the image. You change the coordonate to cut off the part of the image that you don't want.
- the box named "subpicture options" is for the choice of the subtitles.

So, you click on next and you have that window:



the button "Auto Detect" always gives the best results. Then you click on Next, and you have that window:



- The first box is for the video encodings. You choose DivX or Xvid. They are both very good. (Note: you need to have the codecs DivX or Xvid on your computer, of course)
- the second box is for the audio encodings. MP3 is a good choice. My advice, don't touch nothing in the audio box.
- the third box is for the resolution of your video. If you want a precise resolution, you choose here. If not, you let the software's choice.
- at the right of the resolution box, you can choose the size of your video. For an episode of a TV series, 350 Mo is the most common choice. Or if you don't care, you let the software do it automatically, using the space he needs. You can too choose here if you want the ripp into one single video file or more (for a movie split on two CDs for exemple).

You click on next and you have that window:



here, you can choose the language of your video if there is many languages available on your DVD. You click on OK, and then, you're back on the previous window where you can now change the audio settings (but my advice: don't touch it. MP3 is the best), and you click on next,and you have that window:



The software is coverting your DVD into an .avi file. It can take up to a couple of hours, depending of the speed of your computer and the lenght of the video to encode.

If you click on "shutdown computer when done", your computer will automatically go off when the encoding will be finished.

You let the software works without touching to anything else, and when it's done, you have the .avi file of your video on your hardrive, at the place that you choose at the beginning of the process. And you can use that video to make your music videos!

EDIT: You can download the software here: http://www.01net.com/telecharger/windows/Multimedia/encodeurs_et_decodeurs/fiches/27963.html?fy
Just click on the "télécharger" button. And then, if the download doesn't start automatically, you click on the link "lien n°1".

Thanks poussin! I appreciate the information. I'll have to try it out if I get some time!