Newbie VIDEOSTUDIO vid crop question

col1969 · Post by **col1969** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:15 am

hi everyone,

apologies for the dup post, yes i mean VIDEOstudio

I'm an amateur musician & just about completed my first vid made up of loads of youtube clips & have a couple of issues...

Bearing in mind the vast diversity of the clips I'm using, is there any way I can adjust these so that the 'frame' remains constant throughout (I'm aware if this is possible I'll lose some quality by enlarging the area I want to keep) ?

Secondly Ive tried cropping vids (eg to remove logos etc at the bottom of the picture) but can't work out how to do this. Ive tried using the vid filter > crop tool & adjusting what looks like a stationary preset but even with the 'stationary' option activated inside the preset all i can manage to do is change the start point of the clip, ie to begin with the pic is fine but then it 'zooms' (which i don't want) & shows the bit I'm trying to hide.

Once again any help would be much appreciated. btw I'm using MS Plus 11.5.

Thanks a lot,

Col

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:56 am

You say you managed to sort out the start of the clip. Not sure how you did it but if you click on "customise" filter settings you'll get a timeline pop-up with a little red diamond indicating the first key frame.... if you right click on that red diamond you can then select "copy"...right click on the last key frame and select "paste". and you can make all sorts of key fram points in between.

As for your frame size options bare in mind that if you are using video from youtube (how are you importing it?) you are starting of with a very compressed low res image. Any renedering will further crap out the video.

As a work around this might work.... with the video with the smallest frame size in the video track add any other video of slightly larger frame size in the overlay tracks. Adjusting the frame size manually to something close to the frame size on the video track.

Try it that way.... it's the only way I can think of that reduces the number of rendering processes.

Your Project properties need to match those of the video witht he smallest frame size.

Create a video file when finished editing....

For youtube I suggest something like... WMV file 320x240 frame size at 30fps, frame based (don't interlace the video)

But let me warn you now if you started off with youtibe video files it's going to look crappy...and even more so when following the process above. It's unavoidable as you are editing video ina format that not meant to be edited.

As a musician I trust you are respecting copyright too.

col1969 · Post by **col1969** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 1:57 pm

Thanks a lot Clevo, that's some very useful advice for a newbie such as myself. I mustve missed that bit about the red diamond, sounds like that'll do the trick.

I'm just using the downloader that comes with Firefox, then converting the flv file to MPEG2 (sometimes MPEG4) with SuperC. I admit though that I have no idea which format to choose to get the best results, whether that depends on the original file properties, and whether it's even possible to see the original flv file properties - for example wouldn't be a complete waste of time specifying a quality higher than that of the original file, needlessly resulting in much bigger files?

Re the frame size options that's some good advice for what I'm trying to do - I'm still getting to grips with overlays (and VS in general - as you can tell!). Yeah I'm aware that the finished product will be crappy, but there are different levels of crapness, some more acceptable than others!

I'm not trying to create a masterpiece here, just a showcase for my music, something a bit more interesting than an mp3 on it's own. probelm is I'm not aware of any resources comparable to youtube (in it's sheer breadth of material) where the vids can be filtered on picture quality.

But once again thanks - this has really helped.

As for copyright I'm always respectful!

Cheers,

Col

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 1:41 am

Let us know how you go....

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:06 am

A few useful links for you:

From camcorder to DVD with VideoStudio
From Camcorder to DVD with Video Studio - Editing Phase.
VideoFilters including:

Keyframes:
Pan & Zoom

VideoStudio: Rendering for You Tube.
Share Videos on the VideoStudio Channel at Veoh.com.
Making and Sharing VideoStudio Movie Templates
Links to Places where you can upload your videos for sharing

col1969 · Post by **col1969** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 1:26 pm

will do.
Thanks for the links - very useful!