Jazzing up old video

flicktease wrote on 4/3/2003, 11:23 PM
I have been given an old video that needs to be jazzed up a bit. Unfortunately only this video exists, none of the original footage is available. Is there a way to jazz up a video that already has been rendered & has music on it? I will import this video as an AVI file. I know that I could add some extra clips as overlays without disturbing the sound that can't be altered but if I did this would the entire video have to be rendered again or just the extra additions? Can transitions be added without upsetting the music?

I suppose that I could add a few transitions but to do this I have to make a split in the film & overlap the 2 parts. Since doing this would shorten the video & I can't touch the sound, I suppose that I would have to slow down one of the clips just enough to compensate you the missing video? Am I on the right track in my thinking? Does anyone else have any ideas as to what can done post rendering?

Comments

Grazie wrote on 4/4/2003, 12:17 AM
My approach would be to experiment with colour changes - Accept it is old and move on. There is a neat Fx newsprint effect - you could use this sparingly for "known" dates and give it a date - eg a documentary. Maybe try some "hard" fx colour and density fxs. I understand you mustn't change the audio - however you keep the audio in real time, but maybe experiment with small slomo stuff. Maybe some "repeated" sections in a corner of the clips. The new "video as faling pages" effect would give you a "book-style" = time passing effect.

Oh, make "stills" and let them dissolve in and out - audio untouched. If you make them appear like a "snap-shot". I've used this to good effect, and have aplied a "whoosh-click" sound, like the sound of an SLR camers doing its thing.

See if you can "snatch" a piece of footage from somewhere else in the material and copy this over - like a cutaway - audio unchanged - yeah?

See if you can get some Newstories of the period, newscast, cartoons of the day, shots of house implements of the day - make this stuff fly in and fly out on spirals and floats - yeah?

Lots and lots to try - Very Nice project! Wish I was sitting on your shoulder - we would have a lot of fun. Ohh yesssss........

Hope this has helped,

Grazie
TorS wrote on 4/4/2003, 12:43 AM
You haven't said why you want to jazz it up, nor what format it is. That said, here are my immediate thoughts:
Some music is editable. Sometimes you may be able to cut at the beginning of a verse and at the beginning of another and take that bit out or repeat it.
Mute everything else, play the track and hit m on the first beat of every bar. If you are fast or slow, you might be equally fast or slow all the time, so the cuts will seem to be spot on anyway.

Otherwise, put the video on the timeline. Add an empty track above it. Copy bits from the main video track to the empty track and manipulate them.
Tor
CrazyRussian wrote on 4/5/2003, 6:37 PM
Import it as .avi, then SLICE it into small peices as you add them to the project timeline: add entire avi file to the timeline, then press "S" on 5 min, 10, min, 15 min (etc) marks, this will make these peices independent from each other giving you MUCH more control and options. I wouldnt have audio added separate and not sliced because if you mess something up, or shift video it will be out of sync, keeping audion with individual slices will give you "quality control" function
Paul_Holmes wrote on 4/5/2003, 6:58 PM
I've been doing a lot of "slicing, dicing, pulling and pushing" with photo-movies I've been working on. I always select the audio track then Edit | Switches | Lock so that the audio track won't be disturbed. Then I work in groups of three events where I feel I should speed something up and then slow it down, or vice-versa. So I do a split before, after and somewhere in the middle. Then I use Ctrl-Drag to speed up one section and slow down the other. Sometimes this group of three comes just before something that needs lip synch, so I make sure the third split is just before that. Anyways, lip-synch is always there and in the parts that don't need it, it's easy to pull one of them over a section that does to provide fades (again using CTRL -- just slows the speed of the preceeding clip a little.