Lost and frustrated here!

[hot.woof]

Not a total idiot, as I have 30 years experience as a licensed medical professional; however, the terminology and complexity of video editing is daunting...not to mention I am not the "stay on the computer for 3 days until you figure it out" type. Anyway I would like to add some clips taken with an iPhone into a video taken with a webcam and have been told I must: 1) Resize, 2) Add a border to and 3) Crop the stream.
I would be so grateful for some help. Thanks

[aedipuss]

you probably need to purchase video editing software. check out something like vegas movie studio. they have a free demo period to see if you like it.

[hot.woof]

thnx!

[hello_hello]

I wondered how I'd do it after reading your post and came up with what I thought was a clever method to do it using AVISynth (it's a frame server used by many encoding programs) and after a bit of experimenting I came up with a fairly easy way to open each video for encoding and combining them using a simple AVISynth script while automatically resizing each video and adding borders where necessary and even converting them all to the same frame rate if need be. It worked a treat when I tested it. Then.... I thought of an easier way for someone who's not accustomed to converting video. Oh well.......

If you simply want to join files while re-encoding them, the free version of AVC (AnyVideoConverter) will do it. It'll automatically resize and add borders where necessary. Simply drag and drop the various video files into AVC (in the correct order) and click on each while holding down the Ctrl key. With each selected, right click and select "merge output".

The AVC "gotchas" and things you need to know.....

Watch out for AVC's offer to install a toolbar or something similar when you run the installer. Deselect that option to install only AVC.

If you don't need to do any editing, just merge the files. Before adding them though, it might pay to go into AVC's options and under the video tab make sure "fit to width" and "expand to frame size" are both checked. If those settings aren't right AVC will probably resize each video differently and the merge process will fail. You should be able to uncheck the "round to 16" option. Under Audio/Video Sync crank the slider up to maximum.

AVC has a list of preset encoding formats for various devices, or by selecting "video files" as the output format and either "Customised AVI" or "Matroska Movie"... between those two you can mix and match just about any video/audio encoders you prefer.

When you load each file to be encoded, AVC will display some basic info about it. If they don't all use the same frame rate, in the frame rate section pick the frame rate which is the most common for your source videos or try leaving the frame rate setting on auto.

In the encoding section under frame size you can either select a frame size from the list or type in your own (the ability to type in a frame size mightn't be immediately obvious).

In the audio section where you select the encoding options change the AV Sync setting from "basic" to default" when merging files to hopefully eliminate any audio sync problems.

Often when you change an encoding option such as bitrate or frame size etc the chosen setting doesn't "stick" until you click on something else. At least it didn't for the older version I was using recently. If that happens, after selecting your desired frame size (for example) simply click on the "Video Options" heading to make the frame size setting "stick".

You can't edit the video and merge it. If you want to edit you'll need to re-encode each individually while editing, but you can encode those using a lossless format and then load the edited version into AVC for re-encoding/merging using whichever encoder you normally would. To encode to a lossless format first, select "Video files" for the output format and either "Customised AVI" or "Matroska Movie" as above. Using either of those you can select huffyuv or ffv1 as the lossless video codec. The former is faster but produces larger files. PCM will give you lossless audio to match.
That way you can load a video, select a part to keep, encode that in a lossless format, do the same for another section, then the same for a different video etc.... and when it's done load the individual lossless encodes into AVC for merging while re-encoding. It's editor isn't all that flash, but it does have one.

Editing aside..... re-encoding a bunch of separate videos as a single file should be as simple as installing AVC, opening and selecting them all, right clicking and selecting "merge output". Chances are after you install AVC it's defaults will allow you to do so without having to mess with any of it's settings, but if the result isn't what you hoped for (the encoded video is stretched or the audio is out of sync or the merge process fails) the above should point you in the right direction to getting it working properly.

If AVC doesn't float your boat, try Format Factory. It's very similar to AVC (although I've not used it for quite a while) and I'm pretty sure it's also free (or there's a free version).

[TreeTops]

You said: " the terminology and complexity of video editing is daunting."

Well you certainly are a fast learner if you can use AVISynth.