Conley

So yeah, looking to make a video. Do I have to stick to Windows Movie Maker, or is there something better for free?

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Coma

A video of what? What are you looking to do? Are you just editing some home video or what?

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gr1mo

Free.... I cant really say there's much of a choice, and I would think that windows movie maker in windows 7 should run decently. I use Sony Vegas, but that's not free.

Quantum Reality

Grab Virtualdub for sure. You can mux and demux video and audio streams and it helps when you want to resync audio after some other utility buggered up your transfer from your DV camera or whatever.

It's also a must if you want to take your lossless HuffYUV or similarly encoded video which takes up a buttload and a half of room and output it to XviD or H.264.

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Coma

Avisynth or ffmpeg would be the must for that... Virtualdub is hardly a good choice for that ;E

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Quantum Reality

I've used it before to convert video formats. I'm just writing about what I know.

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Conley

I'm trying to use it to edit a TF2 movie together, if that helps. Should have mentioned that in the first post.

I use Source recorder to get a demo while in game, and then I make an .avi file using the xvid codec (again, in Source). From there, I need something to edit video/audio.

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Coma

Your process should be to first edit (make cuts, splice scenes together) the video so it's in the order you wish it to be. Afterwards, you can concentrate on adding titles and effects and all. For editing, follow the suggestions below - and as for effects, what kind of effects (effects includes titles, too) do you want to have? Once you answer this question, I can recommend the right software.

I suggest you export the video with a lossless codec, like Lagarith. It will still be an AVI, but unlike XviD, all frames will be I-frames. Every other type of frame is a reference to the I-frame that precedes it, so videos can only be split on I-frames. Since every frame will be an I-frame, you'll be able to trim and splice video without re-encoding, saving you loads of time and improving the quality of the final product. Make sure, when configuring Lagarith (when you select it for output, a little window will show with a Config button), that you select YV12 mode, enable null frames and multithreading.

I suggest you use Virtualdub to do this (to open the lossless AVI and edit it). It may appear confusing at first, but that's just because the UI doesn't appear to be very intuitive - if you do try to tackle it, though, you should be only minutes away from a super-fast video editor. Make sure both Video and Audio are set to Direct stream copy. You'll have issues if you try this method on the XviD video.

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Conley

Ah, okay. I was wondering why VD wouldn't work.

As for after effects, how close can I get to this video for free?:
I'd like to do something like at 0:00 - 0:07 & 0:30 -0:35. The only thing I can figure out is to make a fractal image in gimp.

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Coma

Well, it depends. Is there any tool that lets you export video with a single-color background? Maybe a map with a pure black background, then you could record a demo with yourself running ,if you can then look from free-look, or somebody else if you can't.

You can do it with After Effects by manually masking out the background, but that doesn't seem like a very good idea. It would take far longer than making your own map.

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