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Geek Dad: Home Movies Without the Headache – Forget the Cutting
I have been a technology journalist for more than 14 years and despite I believe I have seen it all, I am still amazed at the astonishing progress that has been made within a few years. We are keeping contact with our kids via cell phones, we are connected day and night to our work (ok, that may not be so much progress) and friends, we are purchasing virtually any product from the comfort of our family room couch, we are carrying tiny music players that store tens of thousands of songs and we have cell phones that can snap pictures and record videos when we want to.
And if you look at recording video in particular, you may realize how quickly technology has evolved. I can remember my dad who was so proud of his (heavy) camcorder he purchased in the late 1980s for close to $3000, my first video camera with a PC connection I bought in 2000 for $1000 to record the birth of my oldest son and a high definition camcorder with a hard drive I acquired for about $800 for my business and to record the birth of my youngest son just over a year ago. Today, we have cell phones that record videos in amazingly high quality. Or, you can opt for a decent video camera that gets you that high definition experience for about $300.
Of course, the treasures we recorded in the past on tapes, have collected dust and are packed away in some boxes and may never be seen again. Videos we record today are stored away somewhere on the hard drive of your computer. Cutting digital videos is a rather time consuming and often very expensive task and I find myself losing interest in videos much faster than in pictures as a result.
What always bothered me is that we record those short clips that never seem to fit together and are just a pain in the you know what to glue together. And let’s be honest, video clips of a birthday party are not really exciting entertainment anyway. You can spend hundreds of dollars, days of training and hours of cutting to fix that problem and create a custom home movie, but there is another option that is much cheaper – an option that may provide simply what you are looking for.
I have been playing for several years with a software called Muvee, which automatically cuts a digital movie for you. It analyzes the sequence of a movie, removes the less interesting and blurry parts and attaches the movie to a song you select. All you have to do is to wait until the movie is analyzed (which can take several minutes, if you don’t have a reasonably powerful PC), choose a theme and a song from your hard drive and add a caption. Then simply sit back and wait until the movie is created.
Select your movie, a song and sit back.
In most cases the result is impressive, but if you are not happy, you can drop or highlight certain portions of clips. The downside of the Muvee concept is that the original audio gets lost, since you replace it with music. But if you think about it, the outcome is an entertaining movie you can easily upload to YouTube, send to your friends and family via email and store in that special folder on your hard drive. Oh, and you can transform any sequence of pictures into a slideshow and save it as a video as well.
Muvee Reveal is the flagship version of the Muvee product line and comes with 11 different cutting themes from fast to slow and simple to fancy transitions. The software sells for $80 (recently reduced to $60). There is also a version for $40, which is just as capable, but it does not allow you to split long videos into smaller portions and it does not allow users to change the sequence of the pictures shown in the final video. A simple version for basic needs and no additional functionality sells for $30.
You can find more information on the manufacturer’s website. You can download the software from the Muvee website or order the boxed versions for more money through Amazon.com: Muvee Auto Producer 6 ($130) | Muvee Reveal ($80)
Here are some of the effects available through Muvee Reveal:
Cube effect
Slicing effect
Scrapbook
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