Making Videos on a Budget – How to Composite Your Own Pictures

If you have been contemplating putting an ‘infomercial’ video on your website or YouTube, in an effort to attract more business, you may be pleased to know you can actually do it for much less than you thought.

Digital cameras are very affordable these days and a good one with all the functionality you will ever need will cost you less than ?00.

Remember, don’t get hung up on the ‘Mega Pixels’ 7.2, 8.5, 10 or even 12. Yes, the higher the number means the better quality the picture or video, but it also means the bigger the file size, so it will take more memory to store your footage and pics. And it won’t matter anyway because when you come to edit and encode your video it will need to be compressed to a level which can be ‘streamed’ to your viewers. Therefore a camera with around 5.0 mega pixels is more than enough.

Format. This is important because not every camera records video is the same format. So you need to check that the video editing software you are using is compatible with the cameras.

There are literally hundreds of different video editing software programs on the market, some costing many hundreds of pounds. But you will be pleased to know that one of the best ones is free and you probably already own it.

Windows Movie Maker Version 2 is installed as standard on all new PC’s and laptops. And it is the best place to start when learning how to put your own videos together. With it’s simple and intuitive storyboard layout you can quickly drag and drop your video footage segments and pictures on to the storyboard. You can then add ‘effects’ or transitions to the storyboard to make your video look seamless. Learning this program is easy but practice is essential to learn how all the effects and transitions compliment each other.

Learning good camera work is essential. But this takes time and lots of practice, so to get good results fast it would be advisable for you to concentrate on just ‘Static’ pictures. One big trick that gives you a great advantage is ‘compositing’ your picture. Now this is not as difficult as it sounds. In fact it’s very easy to do, as long as you know what to do.

The process of composting starts with the ‘Taking’ of the picture, it must be done on a ‘Black’ background. Then upload your picture to your PC. It is advisable to take your picture in 640 x 320 most videos are viewed in this size so the pictures don’t need to be any bigger than this. If your camera takes bigger pictures then just resize them in a program like Coral, photoshop or webplus. Once this is done open your picture using Microsoft ‘Paint’. Again this is free software and can be found an all PC’s as standard.

Next step is to ‘Remove’ the black background, by selecting the ‘Erase’ tool you can slowly click on the background of your picture turning it ‘white’. This process is much easier if you use the custom ‘Zoom’ feature up to the maximum 800% making the pixels much bigger and easier to delete.

Go around the main object in your picture with the erasure tool getting as many of the black pixels as you can without removing any from the object. This can take some time but it is worth it.

Once all the background has been removed your object in the picture should be totally isolated with a white background.

Now select your ‘Fill’ tool from the side panel and choose the black colour. Now fill the white background with the black.

The effect is simple and gives the picture a professional look. Now save it and repeat this process for all your other pictures.

Once completed you need to do one more picture. A black background with no object in it. Use your last picture you composited and open it up. Use the ‘Select’ tool from the paint menu and highlight your object. Now delete it. You should have a big white box where your object was. Select your FILL tool and fill the white box with black. Now save it as ‘BlackBackground’.

Once completed import all your pictures into Movie Maker.

On the storyboard always start with your BlackBackground picture in box 1, then add one of your composited pictures into the second position, box 2. Add a ‘FADE’ transition in between box 1 and 2 and then ‘preview’ the movie.

You should see a black screen then your ‘object’ smoothly fade in.

Now add the ‘blackbackground’ again but this time in Box 3, add another fade in between box 2 and three and then preview the movie again,

You should see your composited picture smoothly appear, hold for a few seconds and then slowly fade out.

Here’s an example video: uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h7TEhg3XswE

YouTube and You

Since YouTube’s launch back in 2005 the video sharing website has literally exploded in both size and popularity. Millions of people have uploaded videos to this site for both personal pleasure and for commercial use. It has been reported that over thirteen hours of video is uploaded every minute and that YouTube’s bandwidth costs are over $1million a day.

So as a business should you have an active presence on YouTube?

The simple answer is ‘Yes’. But there are a couple of things you need to know before you go ahead.

The first is that you will loose the ownership rights to any video you upload. This is not as scary as it sounds, it just means you have to be clever about ‘what’ content you put into your video. Remember, because of the ‘Viral’ nature of YouTube, the possibility of your video appearing on other external websites and third party discussion forums is very high.

Second. Do your competitors have an active presence on YouTube? If so, then you must remember that if you choose the same or similar keyword tags for the YouTube search engine as your competitors video, then once your video has stopped playing a list of ‘similar’ videos will appear on the video screen. This has its advantages and disadvantages, but if you are hoping to embed your new YouTube hosted video on your own website as part of your sales pitch to your customers, you should be aware that you could be giving your rivals some free advertising.

Don’t forget YouTube is a ‘social networking’ site and the premise is all about ‘sharing’ your content with others. Some will like your video, others will not, but what YouTube gives them is the platform to voice their opinions both good and bad.

Finally, in 2006 YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65Billion and because they are now part of the ever increasing Google umbrella, YouTube videos appear in the Google search engine results. So if increasing your organic listing in Google is important then having a presence on YouTube is a sure fire way of making that happen.

Using ‘Music’ in Your Companies Website Videos

Today video is the hottest way to promote and market your products online. But if you are not careful with the music you use in your production you could find yourself in serious hot water with a lawsuit that could end your business.

As a commercial business creating a video to sell your products is a logical step. So if you decide to use music to give the production depth, feel and professionalism, then you better make sure you use the RIGHT music.

Forget buying music from iTunes or ripping a track from your favourite music CD. Even though you have legally ‘bought’ the track to listen to you do not have the legal copyright ‘licence’ to use it in a third party video production for commercial gain.

You need to use ‘Royalty Free’ licensed music. In fact you are not actually buying the music, your buying the licence, which allows you to use it in all sorts of commercial projects like videos, podcasts or even tradeshow stands.

You may also be subject to other terms and conditions for corporate usage to protect the integrity of the music. Synchronization with other visual elements ensuring that the music itself is ‘Not’ the main focus of the video. Making sure the music is embedded within the video itself so there is no way the music can be downloaded or streamed independently of the other visual elements.

This is called a “Direct Licence”.

For most video productions a direct licence means the fee you pay includes all performing rights fees to the licensor and no royalties need to be paid to the organisation. This basically means you can use the music in lots of different projects, which can be seen or heard by an unlimited amount of people without it affecting what you pay.

Other productions, for example if you are producing a DVD for sale, may require an additional licence if production is more than 10,000 copies. So make sure you read the small print in the sites terms and conditions regarding the licence.

Your video will also require a ‘Credit’ to be given to the music producers at the end, again the exact wording and content of the credit should be provided with the music licence.

Price:

The cost of music is really down to the site you choose to use. As an example this site: http://www.uniquetracks.com licences cost from around $40 per song.

Most songs come with ‘additional’ loop or alternative ‘mixes’ tracks giving you the ability to use different variations so you keep to a theme without it getting boring. So if you use it wisely you will be able to make your $40 investment go along way.

Unique Tracks has literally hundreds of songs on its site covering all sorts of different styles from Jazz to orchestral movie soundtracks and everything in between. Again, music can be bought individually or you can buy an ‘Album’ full of songs for $100.

(Note: always choose the WAV file format not MP3, it may be a little more expensive but if you are ‘looping’ the song, WAV files don’t have a break at the beginning of the song so the loop is seamless.)

So to guarantee you don’t receive a nasty e-mail from a record company wanting to sue you for every penny a $40 to $100 investment in legal music would be the smartest move you could ever make.