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Old 04-22-2012, 05:15 PM   #18 (permalink)
Trollheart
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4. Beyond the basics

4a: YouTube: sometimes, if you want something done properly...

There will of course be those occasions when you spit and snarl and rage that the particular video you want is not available on YouTube. This will happen, it's inevitable, unless you tend to go for very generic albums where all the tracks are easily locatable. So what happens when you really want to post that hard-to-find video but YouTube returns no results? Well, I normally make my own.
It's not as hard as it sounds.

Of course, if you want an arty, bells-and-whistles video with zooming effects, transitions and floating text, using several different images or even video clips stitched together, I can't help you. That sort of thing is creative expression, and down to the artistic talent and indeed available time of the person involved. I once tried to create one of those sort of videos: took me over three hours and I was only two or three minutes into the song! Not as easy as it looks, let me tell you!

But if you want something more basic, step this way. Remember, people here are not looking for award-winning, cutting-edge video. In fact, most of us could care less about the video itself: it's the music we're interested in. So when I need to upload a video to accompany a track I want to feature, I use the simplest, most basic format I can. The idea is to get the video up, not to create a masterpiece. So a simple graphic of the album cover over which the music plays is usually enough for me. Yes, it's boring and ordinary, and shows little or no creative thought, but as I just said, no-one's looking for the next genius in video composition. They just want to click the video so they can hear the track.

To be honest, if YouTube allowed you just to post music I would, but they're a video site and so you have to upload some sort of video to get your music online. The good news is that it's not hard, and you can use free software to create them. And once you've created your first video, it's the same process every time. So how do we do it? Well, we need two pieces of software (This assumes that you're using a Windows PC, sorry. If you're using Linux, a Mac or some other system, you'll need to look elsewhere for a tutorial) and a very basic understanding of graphics.

WINDOWS LIVE MOVIE MAKER

There are of course other programs you can use, some probably much better, but I've found this one to be both easy and free, and it integrates perfectly into Windows 7. If you're using a version prior to Windows 7, this software should, I think, already be built-in to the operating system. For a Windows 7 version, go here Windows Live Essentials - Download Windows Live Essentials and click the “Download” button. Once the program is installed on your system, rack it up and you'll see this screen

Click where it's ringed in red and you'll be taken to a browse feature, where you can select a picture --- any picture, but I usually use the album cover --- that will be displayed when your video runs. If you don't have the picture you want, you can just download it, either from Google or Wiki (see previous tutorials 1a(2) and 3b) and then navigate to it. Either way, you should end up with something like this

You'll notice that the picture is shown in a large version on the left, and a smaller on the right, both ringed in red. Under the larger picture are buttons like play and stop, but there's nothing to play at the moment: this is only a picture. So we need to add our music.

This we do by going to the “add music” tab, as shown: the one that looks like a musical note.

On clicking this, we then get a further menu. Click on the one marked, where it says “add music”. You can click the other one, “add music at this point”, but I normally use the first one.

Now browse your music collection to the album you want to use the track from. In this case, I'm using Journey's “Eclipse”. Highlight the album directory and either double-click or hit the “open” key, as shown.

Navigate to the track you want. Here I'm choosing “Resonate”. Click “open” or double-click.

Now look at your screen. You'll see that on the right, the smaller image now has a musical note above it, and the name of the track you just selected (or as much of it as will fit, anyway). But note, also in red, the length of the project. It's still seven seconds, which will be totally useless for your video. Try it. Hit the “play” button. You'll get seven seconds of your track, then the video will stop. What a bummer!

Of course, that can and must easily be fixed. What you need to do now is go to the “Project” tab, as shown

and click on the icon marked “fit to music”, again as shown

NOW look at your screen to the right! See the difference? Instead of just the one picture, you now have dozens, so that there is now a vertical scroll bar to show you that they continue on past your immediate field of vision. Also, the FULL title of the track can now fit, as well as the artiste and album, and displays across the screen. In addition, looking to the left, you'll note that our video length is now correct, in this case 5:10, and you can test that by hitting the “play” key again. You'll see the black bar to the extreme left of the first icon move slowly across it, and then over the rest, over and down, while the music plays. Your video is now ready to be saved.
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Last edited by Trollheart; 01-22-2014 at 05:18 AM.
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