Creating Silent Home Movies

[jj52555]

Can anyone please point me in the right direction. I am interested in making a funny silent home movie for the holidays for my family with existing camcorder footage. I am looking for a windows based program that will allow me to mimic the old style silent movies by doing the following: speeding up the film, adding aging effects to it, changing color to black and white, and if possible adding the ability to insert the old style full screen caption dialogue boxes.

Any help wopuld be greatly appreciated. I know there are many great minds in this forum. Thanks
jj

[steveryan]

For starters try the old cinema filter for Virtualdub, it's very good. http://www.compression.ru/video/public_filters.htm

[Scorpion King]

First to come to mind that can do all that easily is Ulead VideoStudio v10. Not free but trialware for 20-30 days I think. Aging by using the old film filter, speed by using framerate adjustment, silent by muting the existing audio track, movie by adding your soundtrack(s), insert caption dialogue by adding custom titles. Easy.

Good luck.

[byteguy]

EditStudio has a great "old film" effect built in and you can adjust all of the settings.

The full-screen titles would be easy. Do a layer underneath that has a black background and the old-style frame, put the movie above it with the old-style effect applied directly to it, "Split" the movie at that points where you want text and put the text into the hole.

For each piece of the movie you can adjust the speed with a slider, enter a percentage, or use a tool to stretch or contract the scene.

The support on their forum is wonderful with the developers always checking in.

[guns1inger]

virtualdub can do all of this, although adding the captions would be a little tricky

[jj52555]

Thanks all for such a quick response!!!! I will get to work immediately and try all these wonderful suggestions. Ill post periodically as to my progress.

Thanks again!! jj

[lordsmurf]

I would do it in Adobe Premiere. I've done this before, just playing around.

[discguy001]

quicktime pro also has an "aged film" effect. Try blurring your video a little, too.

[daamon]

For starters try the old cinema filter for Virtualdub, it's very good. http://www.compression.ru/video/public_filters.htm

I would do it in Adobe Premiere. I've done this before, just playing around.

I second both of these, but that's coz I've already got Premiere - it could be a bit expensive otherwise.

I'd be inclined to "treat" the raw footage to aging in VirtualDub with the "old cinema filter" and then use the resultant DV AVI for editing in Premiere or similar. But there's more than one way to skin a cat...

Good luck.