talkmagic.co.uk

(Split from a post in mods area where we went off topic, thought it might be more useful out here, Nickj)

... and with the quality versus cost issue on computer peripherals these days, a £20 webcam will undoubtedly come with some software anyway - which may even contain basic encoders.

Mog - your vids seem pretty well honed, as do Nicks... you guys fancy getting your skulls together and giving us a sort of 'Making a Movie' roadmap -with pointers like size, resolution, compression etc.???

You guys seem to have 'hit the spot' - so it would be worth sharing the info so we can standardise.

to be honest i just use the tips from the magicbunny filesharing forum.... *slips into shadow ninja mode and heads off to magicbunnyforum while humming tune to mission impossible to meself..... dum dum dumdum.. dum dum da daaa.. tootloooo totlooootootlooooodadum!*... hehe


courtesy of Shaun Robinson

How can I make my own video?

Here is a quick guide to what you’ll need if you want to put up your own videos.

Firstly, you will need a video camera or webcam!

Ok, so you got your file and its on your computer (will probably be in a .avi format) but you will probably find that the file is a couple if not a hundred megabytes in size. So, you need to compress the video, this can be done in various ways:

1) Real Media

Real player is used a lot by magicians for this kind of thing. It allows for small file sizes and good/ish quality.

Go to www.real.com and do a search on there for Helix Producer. This program will allow you to make your video files into real media. The input file will be your original video. You now need to set an audience, this means the connection speed of the people who will be watching your videos. The best one to use is 150k LAN. This is a lot faster than 56k modems, but it isn’t going to be too big to mean some one will be downloading all day. It’s the right balance of quality and size. These two trade off each other, higher quality, bigger file and vice versa.

2) .wmv files

This is my personal preffered method. This means that the file will be made into a .wmv file, and will be viewed with windows media player (with a plug in). To actually encode a video into .wmv you can use windows movie maker. This can be found on www.microsoft.com in the downloads section. Download it. Then go to file> input file and open up your original video. Now, drag it onto the time line, and click file> save movie as… this will give you options to change the file name and the compression size. Stick to 150k its about the best.

tadaaaaaa!

Mog, you bloody thief! And who says knowledge costs money?


Anyway, nice one. That should do the trick. And thanks everso for transcribing the lyrics for the Mission Impossible theme

I would always go for .wmv cos pretty much everyone has media player and not everyone wants to be downloading vicious spyware from real to watch videos!

The other advantage I found was that .wmv had the smallest file size to quality ratio when I did the most recent one (the rest were done a couple of years ago with a webcam before I had any software so they were just 'as is'.

The major factor is to keep the file size down, for those of us who sometimes have to connect by modem a few meg is the practical limit for waiting for videos to download (though when the future dvd comes out there shouldn't be a limit!).

I will be able to produce a few more vids in a couple of weeks, at the moment my dv camera is being serviced and I have no time but I will finish uni for christmas break on the 12th (it is so hard being a student ) so I will do some more then.

in fact... ive just had another look at that and the bit about the windows version is kinda vague when it comes to using a webcam.... so here is "Mogs Movie Masterclass" (alliteration is a wonderful thing )

ok if you download the media encoder from microsoft and run it , it should open up with a new file wizard (pretty apt!) you will be asked what you want to do, click the top option "broadcast,capture or convert....." Then it asks "what would you like to do" (again), this time click the second option "capture audio or video from devices attatched to your PC". Next you are asked what devices you want to use for video and audio, choose whatever you prefer from the drop down menus. Next choose what youd like the file to be called, then you decide how the output file will be distributed (click webserver) Now the next bit is the important bit as this pretty much decides the quality of the output file.....i use the following from the drop down menu "Video for colour PDA devices 150Kbps" now i know were not using PDA's but this seems to give the best output when viewed on a website... (check magicbunny for my vids to see what you think) after that its all plain sailing... the next screen is the description where you can put names and details for the clip....when you click finish the fun begins.....

the encoder window opens and should show an input window and an output.... basically click on "start" in the bottom right corner and the windows will show the input and output files as they are filmed.. if you dont like the video just click on stop.... if you click start again it will overwrite what you have just filmed... if your happy with it then post it on the forum!

to make another movie just click on "session" at the top left corner and click on "new wizard"


easy peasy!!!



ok i know it probably looks complicated but ive had 4 hours sleep in the last 38 so if you just read through it as you try it for a couple of times it should become clear... failing that just ask and i'll help where i can

in fact... justa bit of self promotion here.... Bananafish ive posted the last part of the 3 stage 4 aces routine By marlo on Magicbunny and i must say i think it looks bloody good... hehe... hope the other vids were of use to you

OK, first daft question, I see that Movie Maker specifically refers to Windows XP - will it work on other Windows systems?

i dont use movie maker... i seem to have found the "windows media 8 encoder" .... heres the link... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

Ta muchly - downloading right now!

Dunno why though, the only thing I can vid is the good ol' dropping the deck on the floor routine. But it's that way I do it which is special. No safety net whatsoever, not even life insurance or a pension - and that's very scary.

hehe one good thing about this is it gives you the oppertunity to get advice from people on how to improve your handling of effects or the chance to show people what you can do without having them standing right in front of you all the time burning your every move (which can be kinda offputting) so basically i use this as a learning aid... PLUS one other big bonus is that you control the angles!

I'll get round to doing something - even if only for posterity or just to make you guys laugh!

Apart from finger flnging sleights, it could also be used to show alternative handlings for packet effects or non-card tricks. Coin magic is one strong area where vids would be good. Hmmmm (Mandrake drifts off into deep thought....then comes back to reality 'cos he ain't any good with coins either).

to be honest coins were never my "thing" i could never get the hang of french drops and finger palms etc... so i think i'll just stick to cards... hehe unless of course anyone wants to give me some old money they done need anymore???..... *knows noone is going to offer so on that note I'm off to bed....hehe*

Nice work guys
Just wanted to pass this on as Real Player is indeed full of spyware and nastyness.
You can use this instead, it plays real files in your windows media player, has no spyware etc.

http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=14513

There is also an alternative to quicktime.
http://www.softrom.ro/11100.asp?op=3

I use both and they work very well.
Now go remove those resource hungry, secretly content downloading bloatwares off your pc and live long and prosper.

BaB

Just looking back thhrough the old topics and thought this may come in usefull for you guys. For most of your film making needs go to..
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/
this place is full of usefull info and frree shareware video editing software, absolute top notch.

A great video editing software is available here

http://www.thugsatbay.com/zweistein/

It's free and it works very well, it also does video capture etc.
I still use this even though I have some other software as it is easy to use and basic (ie not complicated and I am thick after all).
Hope it helps.


BaB