I’m helping a neighbor of mine with his computer, and he is looking for some video editing software and wants a very specific feature. He wants to be able to put a picture-in-picture style inset window of one video in the lower corner of another. He has a digital camcorder and wants to make movies with a picture of himself in the corner narrating. Does anyone know of a software package with this capability, or even perhaps some standalone tool that can overlay two different video feeds like that?
There is a freeware video editor that claims it can do compositing (which is the term for what you want to do) but I have never tried it. You can find it here.
Normally, compositing is considered a fairly advanced technique and usually requires a fairly sophisticated editing package like Adobe Video Collection which includes Premiere for editing and After Effects for compositing (you need both). However, plan on dropping $1K and a lot of time climbing the learning curve for this package.
If the freeware editor doesn’t cut it, then convince your friend to use a simple voice-over and occasional cuts to him talking. That sort of thing can be done on any decent editor and it seems like newer and cheaper editors come out every day. I use Ulead Video Studio which I think is much easier to use than Premiere and only costs $100. I suspect, however, if you go to a big computer store in your area or even a Best Buy if you have one that you may fine something even cheaper that will do the trick.
If you’re using a Mac, there are several possibilities:
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There are several plug-ins for iMovie that will do picture-in-picture rendering. Here’s one from ImageIP, and here’s another from Virtix (though I believe the Virtix one only lets you overlay the footage over a still image).
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Similarly, if you use Apple’s Quicktime Pro (just $30), you can take two video streams, paste one over the other, resize and position it for a PinP effect, then save the result as a new composite stream. It’s a tad long for me to summarize here, but there’s a good description of the process in this book. I think the Windows version of Quicktime will also support the same process.
I’ve been using the Sonic Foundry products for a couple years now, and I’m pretty happy with 'em. I started with Video Factory and eventually moved up to Vegas Video (you can think of Video Factory as a scaled-down version of Vegas). They’ve since been bought by Sony, and I think the current product Screenblast Movie Studio is the current Video Factory equivalent. Vegas is still called Vegas. I highly recommend these products as I’ve been very pleased, and either of them will do what you’re asking about.
At any rate, most of the video editing packages have manuals available on-line - I recommend downloading the manual and checking to make sure whatever package you’re looking into supports the features you are looking for. Also, most of them have on-line support forums that are usually worth looking at, since some of the PC packages (such as the consumer-level Pinnacle editor) are very finnicky with which hardware they get along with.
Vegas 4 (or the new Vegas 5) is my recomendation. I have tried about 5 different professional-consumer products (Vegas, Premiere, Fincal Cut, etc), and I like Vegas the best and found it the easiest to use.
I would, however, tell your friend that this isn’t like learning to play mindsweeper. Video editing takes time and planning. You need to spend some hours with your tools to even begin to learn about all the features and how to use them. It is also like painting - doing your prep work makes it much easier. When you are shooting video to edit later, try to stick to a pre-made story board that you can later translate into video.
Vegas will likely do everything he will ever want to do, and I find the interface much more intuitive than Adobe’s products (never been an Adobe man).
So I guess I would just educate him on what all is required before he plonks down the money to get the software, and set his expectations accordingly. I know Vegas has a demo one can download to play with, and they also have a DVD creation suite that is excellent for quickly mastering DVDs.
On a Mac, Final Cut Pro will do what you need (I’m 90% sure) and it’s learning curve isn’t a steep as the Adobe products, but it will cost you a pretty penny. Final Cut Express is $299 on the apple website.
I watched a student video for a local band that had fifty or sixty of these windows going at once (cutting each member of the band into individual sections) and the effect was astounding.
Thanks for the help. I should have mentioned that he has a PC. Anyway, I’ll forward him the link to the freeware tool daffyduck mentioned and see if that will work for him. He’s not very computer literate, I think the professional level editing software would be way over his head. Plus, english isn’t his first language and that makes it harder to explain things to him.