How Would You Approach This?

JustJoe wrote on 2/19/2004, 9:03 PM

I have many files - some an hour long - of my son throught the years. I want to set some of the clips to music. a kinda music video of him growing up. I can figure out how to match the beat visually. How would extract many 2-3 second segment out of each file and keep them organized. It seems overwhelming handling all that footage. I can see how film editors have such a hard job.

I reallly appreciate any help, you guys have given great answers before.

Thanks much

Comments

jtfrazer wrote on 2/20/2004, 6:27 AM

Joe,

Here's what I tried and it works pretty well. I set up an empty project and imported a long movie and placed it on the video overlay track. I identified a clip I wanted from this movie by scrolling through using the video cursor and the arrow keys. Then I snipped out the clip using the razor blade tool and dragged it down to the main video track. After I had the clips I wanted from that movie I deleted it from the video overlay track. I repeated the process with the next movie, and so on.

Once this was done I could rearrange the clips on the video track to whatever order I wanted and then set music to the finished video.

Others may have a better way, but this worked pretty well for me.

Jim

Former user wrote on 2/20/2004, 6:28 AM

Think of it as Chapters in his life, not as one big video. Break it down, either by age, event or something else that makes a common thing.

If you try to make one long documentary, you will be overwhelmed. Gather your footage by themes, then make short segments of each theme. Don't worry if you can't use all of the footage. No one will watch hours and hours of a kid growing up anyway. Pick highlights, or memorable moments and leave the rest behind.

Pick music that either reflects your feelings about the time, or will mean something to your son. But make the music secondary. It is nice to cut on a beat, but you don't want to be predicatble so that people will anticipate and get bored. Better to have time to tell the story with pictures, than be worried about staying in rhythm.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Dave T2