Windows Movie Maker and AutoMovie

[SQ]

So, on this other site there's been a ton of people who see Youtube and go "Omgwtf I want to make a video! WHERE DO I START?" So I started to make a very simple, noob WMM guide.

And since I am fairly new to WMM2(I only had 1 for a long while), I was covering this new feature called "automovie".

I know this is old news to everyone familiar with WMM2, but if you're not, it's basically this button that does all the editing for you.

Anyway, I was reading through some other tutorials about AutoMovie and WMM through google, and there was lots of praise for it.
How WMM is easily able to detect changes in frames and beats of music to actually come up with a pretty good music video.

Well, I decided I'd read enough, and wanted to see how good AutoMovie really was.

So I made one.

http://www.savefile.com/files/203800

I call it "Feelings of Death and Compassion". XD

It's 2 minutes long, ~11mb .wmv, using Evangelion "Death".
The song is "Icaro Again" from the Shadow Hearts 2 OST.

Anyway, all in all, I was pretty surprised.. The action synch isn't that bad, and it looks like a pretty standard noob AMV.

In fact, because of the noobs frequently saying "This took me 10 minutes" on YouTube, it make me wonder how many people actually use this feature and call the AMV their own.

The drawback to WMM's AutoMovie that I can find is that based on your source, it can take hella long to render(But that really doesn't matter, does it?) and that it goes strictly from beginning to end. If it runs out of footage, it splits your music and adds in some credits.

The only thing I changed in this video was I ended it before it actually ended(Cut out one brief scene, the rest of the music it had no footage to, and the horrible movie-like credits). Everything else was done entirely by WMM, with no help from me.

I was wondering, if someone had released this video, but did not tell you how they made it, what would you think of it, based strictly on editing alone?

Because I'm not a huge fan of Eva, and Eva's a fucked up series anyway, I would've thought this symbolized some greater thing about the series or the editor, and they may just need help with their synch a bit more. I would've never guessed it was done by the press of one button.

Does this make you think twice about how noob AMVs are really made, these days? And have you yourself ever played with AutoMovie? Did you get something that looked pretty decent?

[dj_ultima_the_great]

I did try Automovie once, just to see what it did. Personally, it didn't seem to do much of anything for me. The beat sync was barely there, and it just took scenes as they came up in the chronology.

Basically, I just passed it over after figuring out what it was. Just another feature I wouldn't be using.

However, to be fair, I will admit that if a newbie used that feature or a newbie actually did the editing his/herself... I probably wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference. Of course, this is assuming that all newbies just take scenes in order and make half-assed attempts at synching. Even with WMM, that's obviously not true of all of them.

So... my general thought is that the function is bad, but if you're just looking to throw something together quick for the footage's sake... maybe?


- Jen

[Orwell]

I would think something along the lines of "How the fuck did this piece of shit end up on my computer and why isn't the delete button faster?" The only praise I hand out to noobs is if they already have the concepts of video editing down, or else they used both a song and anime I really like and didn't use Automovie to make the video.

Until Automovie looks like this, someone who has a program make the video for them will always have a video that sucks. Even when I paused and took the time to consider the scene selection and try to pull some meaning out of it, it still a video that sucks.

This isn't to say automovie doesn't have a place in video editing, if for some reason I was co-erced into making a video from the family reunion and knew nothing about making a video, it might work well.

Not to bash the effort of making a guide itself, but a guide to saving, or sponging off those you know, for Magix or premiere elements would be FAR more useful.

[SQ]

Not to bash the effort of making a guide itself, but a guide to saving, or sponging off those you know, for Magix or premiere elements would be FAR more useful.

The forum is pretty much Q&A for computer-related problems for people 13 and under. So it's easier to make a WMM guide, since it's most likely already on their computer.

The only reason I'm making it is so I can just hand them a link instead of explaining the same thing every time.

[trythil]

And have you yourself ever played with AutoMovie? Did you get something that looked pretty decent?

Yeah. I took this and set it to Shonen Knife's "Cookie Day".

The result was...funny. I don't know if I still have it anywhere, but if I do, I'll try to find a file drop.

[Minion]

back when i used pinnacle, i know one of the later versions had something like this. never tried it though

[Melanchthon]

Interesting vid. If I didn't know it was made automatically, I'd say that the timing was okay but the cuts weren't quick enough and some of the scenes seemed random. It's weird to watch -- it has the typical newbie scattergun approach, but it doesn't use all the cool scenes.

Maybe I'll give it a go with some random songs. There were some promising (well, random and subtle) bits of synch in the video, and watching the results of the autovid might take my editing thoughts in a direction they wouldn't normally go.

[guy07]

How lazy can u get?I mean, wmm is easy enough, but to have wmm make the whole vid for u? forshame! This topic should be locked and thrown into a ocean never to be found again.
AMVs are what YOU can do, and what YOU can make, not "push a button, see what happens then tell people u roxors".
Bad!

[Bakadeshi]

How lazy can u get?I mean, wmm is easy enough, but to have wmm make the whole vid for u? forshame! This topic should be locked and thrown into a ocean never to be found again.
AMVs are what YOU can do, and what YOU can make, not "push a button, see what happens then tell people u roxors".
Bad!

Just how much of that first post did you actually read?

[guy07]

.....
Come now, you know I can't read.