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Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:37 pm
by Fletch
I'm making a movie - I rendered my animation and I have all these numbered images, now what?

Now you have to piece them together and save them in a movie file format that can play on the machine you want to use to play them back.

If you do not have a video editing program, many users have found Virtual Dub direct link to download v.1.9.7 for Windows (v1.9.4 works best for some on Vista 64bit)
a very handy, quick, free, no-hassle program for piecing together .jpg files into an animation.

To piece your .jpgs together into a movie (video) using Virtual Dub:

When all animation frames are rendered, open VirtualDub.exe
  1. Go to File>Open Video file
  2. Select the FIRST image "000.jpg">OPEN
  3. All images will be loaded automaticaly in sequential order (this is actually more difficult to accomplish in more 'professional' video editors)
  4. Go to Video>Frame Rate - to set the frame rate at which Vdub should interpret your video.

    NOTE: It should be the same frame rate you selected in Twilight when you exported the animation!
    If it is lower, it will slow down your animation, but may make it 'choppy', if higher, it will make it run faster.
  5. You can now preview your video by pressing the Play1 button at bottom left
  6. Press the "|<" button to reset your video to the beginning and watch again.
  7. Go to Video>Compression and select a codec. If you do not have it, download and install the Xvid codec on your computer before using VirtualDub. The "Xvid" compression is high quality and free.
  8. Compressing the video is not necessary, and can increase the video export processing time a little... or a lot.
  9. Compression makes the video small in memory size, but may effect video quality. Experimentation is important/encouraged.
  10. Go to Video>Full proccessing mode (probably already selected)
  11. Go to File>Save as AVI and name your file.
When finished you should have your animation .avi in the folder you specified.

If you are unable to get your .avi to play, it may be due to the compression codec you've chosen
not being read correctly by the player you are using. Try saving the .avi uncompressed.
Uncompressed .avi files save much faster than compressed, but the files can be HUGE.

Some users save uncompressed .avi files, and use the free Microsoft encoder .wmv codec to shrink their file. It's fast and can be any quality you decide. It will save your video in .wmv format and play for anyone with Windows Media Player on their computer.

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:44 pm
by WardNL
Good tutorial Fletch, thanks.

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:49 pm
by Fletch
Ecuadorian wrote:I've been following for some time the development of OpenShot, a video editor that currently has installers only for Ubuntu, but the developer is taking great care to not include anything Ubuntu-specific in the code, so he can later compile it for other operating systems.

Check the blog, and if you use Ubuntu, try the current beta:
http://www.openshotvideo.com/

So far I must say that it's already way more powerful than Windos XP's version of Movie Maker, and far easier to understand than Adobe Premiere (at least the last trial version I tried).

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:22 pm
by Ecuadorian
Thanks a lot for recommending the free XviD codec, Fletch. I tried it today in Windows 7 instead of the usual DivX and I must say that it's a LOT smoother than DivX when you are editing video, and it reads DivX-encoded content without any problem. With DivX, fast-forwarding and jumping to a specific point while cutting videos together or while synchronizing subtitles was a pain in the neck, but XviD runs smooth as a hot knife in butter. (And I wasted $ in upgrading my DivX license... :evil: )

Here's the link to download XviD for Windows: (Sorry, OSX, there's no XviD build for you yet)
http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html

For those confused about what on Earth I'm talking about, XviD is free and open source, while the Pro version of DivX is $20 ($10 if you are upgrading from the previous version) and it's a pain in the neck to edit or handle in video editors because everytime you fast forward/jump/go to next clip a small DivX logo appears in the system tray, indicating that the system is "calling" DivX to work. In contrast, XviD seems to be fully integrated in the host system. As the OpenShot video editor -mentioned above by Fletch- does not need proprietary codecs in Ubuntu, it edits DivX-encoded video smoothly, too. It's ironic that FOSS codecs handle DivX video way better than DivX itself, don't you think?

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:57 pm
by Ecuadorian
As an additional tip, if you plan to save your sequences for further edit in Windows Live Movie Maker* or any other editor, it's best to set an i-frame (or keyframe) for every second. Normally, this means an i-frame every 30 frames. This will make seeking to a point and rewinding even smoother.
Click the "more" button next to the General Purpose quality preset,
01.PNG
01.PNG (26.05 KiB) Viewed 27170 times
Say yes in the next dialog, and enter a maximum i-frame interval of 30.
02.PNG
02.PNG (16.16 KiB) Viewed 27161 times
As I said, do this only if you plan to further edit your video or for archival purposes, as this way it will be easier to edit. But when preparing the final version to upload to YouTube** or share with friends and clients, a maximum I-frame interval of 300 is perfectly fine.

*=Windows Live Movie Maker is simply excellent, try it. It even has integrated YouTube upload.
**=Unlike YouTube, Vimeo recommends setting a keyframe for every second, so leave it at 30 for Vimeo.

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 3:26 am
by ashscott
Hey what would be people's best advice for watermarking said movie?

Does it need to be done for the render, or can you throw a watermark in easily in virtual dub or windows movie maker?

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:01 am
by Frederik
You can easily insert a watermark with i.e. virtualdub... ;)

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:11 pm
by qwertyuiop
Hello, thanks for the info about how to deal with the seperate jpegs.

2 questions:

1. Is vdub still the best program?
2. What is the easiets way to rename exported jpegs chronologically? I've got 2 folders with each like a 1000 exported Jpegs in them and I would like to join them in 1 folder and continue the counting: Jpeg1001, Jpeg1002 etc
Any easy way to do this?

Thanks

Re: Making a movie - I have these images, now what?

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 7:01 pm
by Fletch
is virtual dub best? well, not necessarily. It's free and light and quick and easy.
there are other video editors, and any of them that is any good should be able to add a watermark to your video for you.

best batch rename program I've used is a free one called Fast Stone Viewer.
it's also best for adding watermarks to still images
it's also best for batch rotating or pretty much any batch editing of still images.
I use it every day and I own Photoshop. Photoshop is too complicated/clumsy for these "simple" things. :totgm: