Video Editing Software for Fencing

[Marc Greve]

Hey guys,

I've found video-taping performance to be a brilliant way to imrpove quickly and as a result have been shooting some video at the fencing club lately and wanted to make them easier to study, both for myself and for other aspiring fencers since the sport's so damned fast at times.

What I'm looking for is a video editing program that will let me:

• Add multiple layers of text to the video - names on either side, names of the various techniques used, the score, small comments.
• Add graphical layers - think arrows pointing to where people make their mistakes.
• Make certain parts play in slow-motion (the hits, naturally). A smaller problem with this is that ridiculous sound you get when playing anything in slow-motion - so either I need to mute the volume or maybe one of you guys have a better solution?
• Multiple layers of video - Pausing the live fight and adding the slow-motion capture somewhere on-screen.
• Put in an additional audio track for real-time commentary.
• The final video project should then be exported into a common video format - divx, avi, mpg, mov, whatever.

If I can get one program that can do some of the stuff and then export that video into a common video file format and then load that into ANOTHER program that can do what the other couldn't that would be a workable solution too. Just not optimal.

I also wanted to do a series where each of the "basic" techniques are explained accompanied by visual cues and the like.

If you have any ideas you wish to add to this project, please let me know - there's always something that can be done better.

The best I've found so far is ArcSoft's ShowBiz DVD. It can do segmented slow-motion, only has one layer of text, 2 additional audio layers and is able to export various common video file formats but none of the other features I listed above.


Any suggestions, ideas, work-arounds - shoot.

[Zukin]

I think Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro may have some of those features.

Here's a list of video editing and compositing software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...iting_software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...iting_software

[ellie]

Yes Zukin is right, Final Cut Pro or After Effects or both in conjunction will work. If you're on a Pc you probably will need to use Premier but can get After Effects on PC as well. I think Final Cut Pro is one of the best editing programs on the market and that's why I have converted to a mac, as FCP is only on a mac. Plus with the new intel macs you can have windows installed, so you have the best of both worlds.

After Effects isn't used too much for editing, but rather for more effects, compositing and motion distortion, which is far superior than what final cut pro offers. Final Cut Pro really is a editing program, that can do ok effects.

I wouldn't recommend editing sound in After Effects, not really made for that.

For what you need I think Final Cut Pro would be fine. You can also minipulate your sound seperatly on the timeline, so you can unlink it to the video clip and increase the speed to the origianl value or fade in or out at that point. You will be able to do slow motion frames and overlays. You can export to many formats, Quicktime, mpeg-4, avi, flash, iphone, divx the list goes on.

You will be able to do multiple windows of video within a clip, basic text, etc. You can also use photoshop files and import them into final cut pro or after effects, if you want to use fancier text layouts and images.

[Marc Greve]

Wow, sounds like Final Cut Pro is the way to go. I'm going shopping monday so I can drop by the electronics store and check out Final Cut there. I assume installed by default on macs - iLife and all that.

Thanks for the list of software to try out, I've been finding a bunch of trial versions today so all that remains now is testing

Maybe I'll upload the video to YouTube and post it here once I'm done - the original and the edited one.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Marc Greve

Wow, sounds like Final Cut Pro is the way to go. I'm going shopping monday so I can drop by the electronics store and check out Final Cut there. I assume installed by default on macs - iLife and all that.

Final Cut Pro doesn't come with Macs. It costs $1,299 by itself. There's also Final Cut Express, which is the consumer version of it ($299). I personally have used Adobe Premiere Elements (in Windows), which is the consumer version of Premiere Pro and is very powerful for its price ($70 on Amazon) but of course not nearly as powerful as FCP or other Pro solutions. In Linux I've briefly used Cinelerra which is ok for something that's free, but pretty buggy and the interface is confusing. What to get depends mostly on your budget.

[aussieNickuss]

On the Macs by default, you only get iMovie 08 (which is pretty weak)...however, you can download iMovie 06 for free which is far more advanced than 08. What you want though is something far more advanced then both of those.

Final Cut Express is actually the full Pro version (GUI and all) with a lot of the professional advanced features disabled. It is sort of the halfway house between iMovie and FCP, except because it has exactly the same interface as Final Cut Pro, if you learn Express, then you have gone a long way towards learning Pro.

Mac is the way to go though, it is the industry standard editing platform.

[delex]

I'm newbie at video editing so my choice is simple proggy called VisiCrop