Tools I used making video comment/questions for Maddison ARG

[QtheC]

I made these videos to comment on and ask questions about the Maddison Atkins ARG:

"Click To Light"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro1UYC-PIDo
http://one.revver.com/watch/254675

Long Fuse Short Fuse Red Rock Blues Clues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeRsl1vhmZg


peterepeat71 asked me on YouTube:

> Q,
>
> I am enjoying your Maddison Atkins videos and I am curious what
> software you use to put them together.
>
> Thanks


Here is my answer:


Everything I use either came with my Windows PC or is freeware I downloaded from the internet.

I use Windows Paint and a freeware program called Irfanview to manipulate still images and screencaptures (Alt + Prnt Scrn). Saving as .bmp's gives the highest quality. Paint works for cropping, adding text, and makes tiny .jpg files for some reason, but Irfanview gives you some photoshop-like color filtering, etc. abilities.
http://www.irfanview.com/

I use Windows notepad to write and edit text so I can cut and paste it into other tools, and keep track of credit links etc.

I use Windows Movie-maker to build the videos. It's pretty good, but it does hang occasionally when you are fiddling with things on the timeline, so I save my "project" A LOT. One hang happens if you are editing title text and try to move things around on the timeline before clicking "done" on the title text edit thing. If it hangs, you have to kill the process (Ctrl-Alt-Del on Windows XP), and select "NO" when you restart Movie-maker and it asks you whether you want some auto-saved file. You want the file you last saved, not the auto thing which might be much less recent.

I use a freeware called Audacity to record music and save it as an MP3 that I can drop into Windows Movie-maker.
http://lonelygirl15.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2534

To get video clips from YouTube or Revver, I grab the .flv files from my browser cache into my work folder, then convert them with freeware "Internet Video Converter 1.4" into .avi files that I can drop into Windows Movie-maker (where you can trim as needed). See posts here:
http://lonelygirl15.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7894

I create the video as a "high-quality" 640 x 480 video ... I think it makes things look better when loaded on YouTube and Revver, but the file size is larger too.