Australian film - Federation of Australian Movie Makers

I worked on it for weeks and produced two versions – the second merely a coloured example. Eventually I
ran out of time and simplified the movements of the trailing letters.
To view Stuart’s “little animated logo” for the end of
the production which he wrote about on the previous
pages. Please just click your mouse over the above
square to view the short video clip.
I think that my instinct that TB Studio would do the job effectively was correct. This was my first attempt
at Roto scoping and in the event neither the black or green screens were necessary for that, but a clean
background is certainly a big help. This project reinforced for me how important careful planning is. I
didn’t tell Ken exactly what I wanted and his routine was far too long causing me design headaches later –
music too long and the changes in the wrong places or not existing at all.
Clive and Ken were happy with the result so I did feel a great surge of relief when it was finally on the
memory stick and on its way to complete the final credits. My final product is 10 seconds long - can I justify
weeks and weeks of work on it? I don’t know - just have put it down to experience I guess !
Kino (http://www.kinodv.org/) is the video editor that comes with Ubuntu and looks to be their favourite video editing
system. I have found Kino a little hard to configure. I had to search lots of forums and web pages to eventually
get Kino to record off my Sony Camcorder. Kino accepts Raw DV, DV AVI and Quicktime DV file formats.
The program itself is very similar to Windows Movie Maker and if you are familiar with this program you shouldn't
have any trouble using it.
Kdenlive (http://www.kdenlive.org/) is another video editing system made for the Linux systems. It
loaded very easily onto my Ubuntu system (reviewed on Pg 42) although I couldn't get it to stay
stable long enough for what I wanted to do. I downloaded some fixes and now it seems to be working
fine. The program itself looks very similar to Sony Vegas but doesn't seem to have all the same
features. The home page for Kdenlive says that it can edit HD and has a video to watch to help you
configure your system to make HD productions.
Other formats are RAW, AVI DV, Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 plus HDV, the list goes on. Have a read. Multitrack editing
with timeline and no limit of video or audio tracks. I must admit I haven't tried everything on this system and I am
sure I will be surprised to find things that I have overlooked but at first glance it reminds me of Vegas and it could
well be as powerful as Vegas.
I couldn't get Kdenlive to record off my camcorder but I think with a little help from the net and some solid reading I
will eventually get Kdenlive to record.
The summary of these two free systems is that if you would like to try something different and haven't the extra cash
to fork out for a video editing system, then try either of these editing programs. My favourite out of these two is
Kdenlive only because I am used to Vegas and Kdenlive looks very promising.
Reprinted with permission from NVM Editor Ralf Jorg
Australian film & video
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