Jan 08 2007
Editing Videos For YouTube
For about three hours last night I was messing about with Sony Vegas Video and VirtualDub trying to get a video, that I recorded with my now fixed IXUS500. All I wanted to do was rotate a 2Mb AVI file 90 degrees to the left.
Firstly, Vegas Video didn’t want to know anything about the video. VirtualDub opened the video and I was able to rotate it but I couldn’t get it to save the results for less than 160Mb.
After saving the rotated video in VirtualDub I was able to open it in Vegas Video and finally managed to save it as a 7Mb AVI file which, to me, still seems rather large given the 2Mb original file, at least I was able to upload to YouTube.
This morning, on the spur of the moment, I checked what YouTube help had to say about editing and uploading videos. Their first tip was about editing software, on Macs use iMovie and on Windows use Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker? Indeed, it comes free with Windows and, as I confirmed for myself in 30 seconds, can easily rotate videos and save them as small WMV files, which YouTube will happily accept.
Now, why didn’t I think of that earlier?
Please note that I’m not advocating the use of Microsoft products. Rather, if you don’t want to spend hours faffing around with complex video editing software to do a simple rotate… use simple software!
Soon I’ll be able to use iMovie
Actually rotating and the like is quite easy in Vegas video but as with all things software, it takes time to master the tools. Now, I dont mean to suggest I am a master but having spent probably months of time actually using Vegas for the last 8 years…. you learn!
I can show you how to do some funky stuff next time you are round and show you how to save small files!!!
Oh yeah… iMovie will do to!!!
And finally… cool video!!!! Have you used it properly yet!?!?!
No I haven’t used it yet as I had to take it apart to make you robot (MouseMover2):
I go to http://www.savetube.com to save youtube videos.