Need Help Altering Company Video CD for Salesman

[jbmail]

Greetings Everyone,

First posting here as I need professional help. I wasted 6 hours yesterday searching Google for trialware to do this , then posted on YouTube Help forums, only to get some smartass who thinks I'm stealing company videos to make my own!!!

This is probably a simple solution for you, but a brain wrecker for me. I am an affiliate for a large firm. they offer me banners, text ads and all sort of promo help, but they do not alter videos for this same reason I am askin g you, they don't want to spend time setting them up for distributors

Basically, they have 28 videos on YouTube. I asked for .flv files for MY promotion, but they said to just take any of them online and put my distributor link in the first part of the description, which makes a clickable link and works fine

The problem is that the main website is embedded across the bottom of the screen as www.xxxxxxx.com, then the first 10 seconds of the video gives company name and address also. I am not so worried about the company name as I'm selling their name, but I don't need people seeing the video & typing in THEIR address while I am promoting, and then I get cut out of sales

I think I have described it as good as I can.

If someone can help me, I will gladly show you the videos, but I do NOT want to post them here, so they will have to be PM, OK?

I appreciate any help you can give me. I was able to change the song in the background, which was cool, but they are useless with this address embedded

Thanks in advance

JB

[Nelson37]

You need to do something like open the video in Virtualdub and crop or mask out the info, HOWEVER, you need specific, written permission from the creator of the videos to be able to do this. The limited help you got from the company may be specifically designed to prevent you from doing what you wish to do.

Their excuse is BS. They HAVE the video without the text embedded, they have chosen NOT to make this available to you. Most likely, they want their name embedded and will refuse permission to remove the info.

[jbmail]

I thank you for the reply. I
think you, like many people, always suspect something suspicious. I already told you that they did NOT refuse anything and told me in writing to do whatever i want, but with 500-1000 distributors, they don't want to tie up their tech-support with requests for sending and altering videos. its like Welchs Grape Juice, their name is all thru the video, but if you want the video to point to the sales source in Cincinatti, why would you leave the main office address there.

I don't think its right that everyone is suspect in this forum world. If I wanted to do something illegal, I would just go to the Black Hat Forums and not here

Thank you

JB

[guns1inger]

I don't believe your motives are being questioned, but the actions of the company suggest they really do not want to help you at all in your endeavor. Putting that to one side though, you have several problems.

The first is the format. flv is an end delivery format. It doesn't edit nicely, and quickly degrades with repeated encoding. Everything you need to do will mean re-encoding the video, so there is a good chance that the quality will drop, or you will end up with larger files.

Second is finding something to edit flv files. Virtualdub can be made to open some flv files, but it may not open or play well with all, depending on how they have been encoded. Start with a mediainfo tree view of one of the files in question to find out what codecs have been used inside the flv container.

Finally, to do what you ask is not simple, and won't look good. Your options are :

1. Crop off the bottom of the clip to remove the text. This will remove all the text, and when you put new text on the screen it will be higher up (because you have cropped off the bottom off the image) and may encroach on the footage to an annoying degree.

2. Use a logo or subtitle removal tool to try to remove the text. At best you will get a moderately noising patch where the text was, but more likely you will get a blurred section of the screen instead. You can then lay your new text over the top. You will be able to preserve the original text in the sections that you want to keep, but the blur will come and go wherever you have removed any text.

3. You can put a black (or some other colour) box over the text, the put the new text on top of this. Like the blur,this will either have to cover and replace all the text, or it will have to come and go throughout the video as you replace just some of the text.

None of these issues would occur if you could get a good copy of the original video in a better format.

[Nelson37]

No, you did NOT state that they had told you to do whatever you want. Giving permission to USE a video is completely different from giving permission to ALTER the video. They said you could take their video and put your name in front, as a seperate but connected video. Ask them directly if you can cover their website address with your own.

The company is almost certainly in possession of the original video with no text on it whatsoever. Having dealt with some similar situations, IMO it is very likely that the company DOES NOT WANT their name removed from the video. They have not offered you the original video, which is what you obviously need to do what you want.

I have original video with my company name all over it. I give open permission to reproduce this to anyone who would want it. I do NOT, repeat NOT, give any permission of any kind to remove my company name from the video, or otherwise alter it in any way. I want my company advertised, that's why I give it away freely.

[lordsmurf]

I would only do this if given permission from the company that owns them.
You might just have to make your own videos from scratch.