any advice on home movies?

dogwalker wrote on 5/11/2009, 10:43 AM

I searched for "home movies" but perhaps I should have widened my criteria. If this has already been addressed multiple times, I apologize.

Basically, I have a lot of old family movies from the past twenty years, and I want to create dvds from them. I've done a few, and people have enjoyed them. I think my push to make them even more interesting is mainly for me.

Up to now, I've done a few things like slow motion for a few frames when the kids were jumping on the trampoline, editing a lot of redundant footage to make the movies shorter, doing a few PiPs where appropriate.

Well, someone in this forum recommended looking at Digital Juice products, so I've bought some stuff there recently (Halloween and Fire swipe sets, and the Wedding Ring editor toolkit). Since I have footage of various halloween parties, I hope to make use of it, and the Fire ones are just for fun.

I'd like to use the Wedding toolkit to take my wedding video and make it look nice, and perhaps my in-laws wedding video as well.

Here's the thing. I'm learning the technical aspects of masking, mattes, PiP, etc, but I'd like to find some training, examples, etc on the creative side. Things like how/when to use Lower Thirds, moving backgrounds, etc. And when do I use these in the video versus using them in DVDA while building the DVD? I'm going to post this in the DVDA forum, too, just for that reason.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

richard-courtney wrote on 5/11/2009, 12:45 PM

As you mentioned the digitaljuice site has some info. Also look at videocopilot.net
even though mostly for use with After Effects, some ideas.

Glad you are editing boring sections.

If it is video I'd do it in Vegas and use DVDA for menu functions only.
Family stuff, a lower third is handy for identifying family members that have moved
away or passed on. Memorial Day take some video of family grave sites and a map
of location. Help your kids find older family when you are gone or not able to visit
yourself. (I hope that is not depressing you) We have video of stills and stories
that remember the good times.

I like moving backgrounds when music is hard to select for the DVD theme.

dogwalker wrote on 5/11/2009, 3:46 PM

Thanks! That looks like a great site.

And don't I feel goofy. I decided to check the search screen again... I hadn't realized it defaults to only the last six months. Now I'm doing a re-search, but extending it to two years, and I'm finding more post pertaining to home movies.

I like your ideas about stills, grave sites, etc. And names! That makes a lot of sense, because we've already lost several people - both my parents and my wife's dad. I was just thinking of making the videos for our immediate family, but what a great idea, putting the names (and places and dates!) on lower thirds for when our kids are older and have their own kids.

As for the moving backgrounds and other stuff, I need to play with that more.

One of the videos was my father-in-law's birthday back in 2002, and I easily cut out half the movie, just removing redundant boring stuff. Added a little soft background music to help give the movie some more impetus, and everyone enjoyed it.

I'm going to next learn how to do the separate audio tracks in DVDA to give people the option. I'm even thinking of having an optional narrative track on our wedding video, but only after I've completed all the other editing. I think my kids would someday enjoy knowing what we were thinking that day, who everyone was, etc.

Again, thanks for the suggestions!

psg wrote on 5/11/2009, 9:08 PM

I have taken a lot of old family VHS tapes and film (8mm) and coverted them to DVD as you have.

With regards to titling and text, I have a number of Digital Juice products, but for titles and lower thirds on family videos, I stick to very simple things. I just want to make sure that I identify people, places and timeframes.

I think using motion and background music on stills keeps it from getting too boring. Sometimes I'll scan in a map and zoom in to show the location of a particular place we went to visit.

One trick I've used is to freeze frame on a person in a video for a couple of seconds and add their name to the screen (sometimes masking out the surroundings) so that the viewers can match faces and names (especially important on old material where only my parents remember the names of certain people!).

Have fun doing it. It's a labor of love, but your family and relatives will really appreciate the effort.

farss wrote on 5/12/2009, 5:09 AM

Seeing as how no one has mentioned it try to clean up the audio.
It's not that easy given that no one pays much attention to this when they shoot home movies. A bit of Eq and maybe a little bit of compression can help though.

Bob.

dogwalker wrote on 5/12/2009, 6:17 AM

Thanks, guys. I like the freezing idea, will definitely use that.

Bob, you're right, I need to work with the audio as well as with the original colors. Some of these tapes are quite old (I remember how HUGE my old vhs camcorder was back then, and now I have a small HV30!).