"Virgin" music video maker with Win98SE - Where do I start???

[Missy316]

As a former 20-plus IT professional, I'm very embarrased to know nearly nothing about how to make simple, amateur music videos like the ones I saw and downloaded back in late 2002. But this is something I've wanted desperately to do myself (just for fun) and have NO idea where to start!

What'd I'd typically see were clips from tv shows or movies set to (mostly) rock music. Back then people must've taken the video off of VHS (or maybe DVD) and the audio from MP3 files on their hard drive. My burning question: How in the heck did they do it and, with my Pentium III 2.4Ghz, 512 MB memory 70GB hard drive Win98SE system, can *I* do the same thing as I essentially have 2002-era (if not older) equipment. Today, I see this type of stuff all the time on YouTube, etc. and these people making such music videos can't all be IT pros - right? lol

With my IT background, I'm totally confident that I can get up to speed - Im willing to learn, upgrade hardware & software (within a fairly small budget) - whatever it takes for me to make my own music videos. The main things I have at the moment to make them, content-wise, are pre-recorded commercial DVD movies for the video portion. (if this is even possible given copy-protection technology) and MP3 files on my hard drive for the audio portions.

So... if anyone can PLEASE help me get started - even just point me in the right direction - this damsel in distress would be MOST grateful. I HAVE tried searching this vast website, as well as the internet in general, but most info I've found is directed to people experienced at SOME level with the latest & greatest technology. I'm not techno-challenged, per se... just techno-rusty. lol!

Thank you all most kindly,
Missy

[thecoalman]

How in the heck did they do it and,

With software of course.

with my Pentium III 2.4Ghz, 512 MB memory 70GB hard drive Win98SE system, can *I* do the same thing as I essentially have 2002-era (if not older) equipment.

The big issue there isn't the hardware, it will take a long time to process (upwards of 24 hours for 1 hour of video compared to 1 hour for p4 3.0 ghz) but most new editors require XP. MS's Movie Maker which comes with XP is all you really need if you only wanted to create a video for youtube. You could search around for a older version of Ulead Video Studio or other software that works under 98 . There are free alternatives but none that I'm aware of that would be suitable for a newbie.

If you have purchased a DVD burner it most likely has some form of trialware/LE software for creating video.

Note that the times I listed above are just guesstimates, actual time varies depending on your source material, what you're doing with etc.

[Missy316]

"

How in the heck did they do it and, ..."
With software of course,

Yes... that much I DID suspect. :P

Otherwise, thank you so much for the reply, coalman; I'll look into all this.

[bendixG15]

How in the heck did they do it and, with my Pentium III 2.4Ghz, 512 MB memory 70GB hard drive Win98SE system,......Missy

Suggest you check out your CPU..... There was no Pentium III 2.4Ghz....
P4s run at that speed ...... Big difference in processing time between P3 and P4

[Missy316]

How in the heck did they do it and, with my Pentium III 2.4Ghz, 512 MB memory 70GB hard drive Win98SE system,......Missy

Suggest you check out your CPU..... There was no Pentium III 2.4Ghz....
P4s run at that speed ...... Big difference in processing time between P3 and P4

Sorry for the long absence. To bendixG15 - you're correct; I was simply going off the top of my head from what I (thought I) recalled about my system configuration.

So now since that's cleared up, do you otherwise have any "how-to" information you might care to share with me in regards to my original question? Thank you.

[Sartori]

Ive remade quite a few music videos over the years , "remade" by using a remix of the track with the original video - splitting the video into segments and realigning them to the vocals on the new music track - which is essentially what you want to do .

For this I used "VirtualDubMod" to split the mpg into segments ( segments of avi`s that is) and then aligned them on a timeline of Vegas Studio . This program output an avi (as I wasn`t prepared to cough up for the extra mpg encoder for it) and used a freeware mpg encoder (which I can`t recall) .

VirtualDubMod is freeware
If you get an old version of Vegas Studio on Ebay it`ll be the cheapest method , download a trial version of it to try it out first though
Search around the site for a freeware MPG encoder like Super
I was using an old AMD XP2100 to do my first ones and it worked fine (on Windows 98 as well) , as the longest video you might make is around the 4minute mark encoding time is not a problem .

There is plenty of other software that does what those can do , this is just how I did it , even though I say it myself I was more than happy with the results .


To do the extra bits you need to do , get a DVD ripper to rip the music dvds to your hard drive and then use VirtualDubMod to load the VOB files and get the pieces of video you want (ie select the start and end frames you want and save that bit etc etc) .

[Missy316]

Thank you, Santori, for the info - I truly appreciate it and will investigate further.

Best wishes,
Missy

[Missy316]

Good grief, I'm sorry - I meant "Thank you, SARTORI"! Got so excited I accidentally misspelled your name and for that I do apologize.

[hech54]

Also look into Reaper for multichannel audio work. It's brilliant and simple to use.

[Sartori]

Thank you, Santori, for the info - I truly appreciate it and will investigate further.

Best wishes,
Missy

Santori , must the time for year lol , the other bits I forgot - save the clips in VirtualDubMod with the HuffyUV codec , this compresses the video losslessly , I found my system coped better by decompressing the video rather than trying to show uncompressed video . The other bit was VirtualDubMod has a button to find scene changes which allowed me to find the end of segments very quickly without dragging along slider through the video manually . Hope this helps as well , have a good xmas .

[Missy316]

Yep - that crazy time of year when thoughts can run amuck before the brain can get them processed sometimes. LOL Anyway, thank you again Sartori (and hech54) - hope you all have a Merry Christmas.