Drawing a straight line

[pistonengine08]

Hi all,
I'm looking for video editing software, and one of my criteria is to be able to draw straight lines over the video or over a still frame. I coach rowers and I'm trying to use the video I take as a coaching tool. I tried the demos for Cyberlink PowerDirector and Corel Video studio. The closet I could come up with is animations where I can draw free-form. I really need to be able to draw straight lines. Anyone know of any products that have a simple feature for drawing straight lines over a video/still frame?
Thanks

[TreeTops]

If the straight lines don't have to move up or down then you could make those lines in a photo program and import that png into your video program. Make sure your background is transparent.

[pistonengine08]

If the straight lines don't have to move up or down then you could make those lines in a photo program and import that png into your video program. Make sure your background is transparent.

I've thought about that, but it seems making sure the line is correctly oriented on the video is not trivial. I will do that if I have to, but I'd really prefer just drawing over the frame I've frozen in the video editing software. I talked to Adobe, and they said Premiere has the feature I want, but no way in hell I'm paying a 20 buck/month subscription just for a feature that's been in Microsoft Paint since the dawn of computing.

[jman98]

If you don't want to pay the subscription, then you may not be able to do it. You're getting dangerously close to what I call "I want to do something that nobody else in the world wants to do, so why doesn't software exist that allows me to do it?" territory. Yes, I know you will argue that surely millions if not billions of people want to do this very thing, but they don't. Exactly how many rowing coaches do you think there are in the world? And out of those how many want to draw completely straight lines on video?

I don't use it, but maybe Vegas can do what you want. It's fairly sophisticated. If not, then you're probably out of options except to pay for Premiere. Yes, it sucks that Adobe has moved to this model. NOBODY is happy about that. Microsoft has been trying for years to go that way without a lot of success so it will be interesting to see if this works for Adobe or it's a colossal disaster that makes people abandon their products in favor of those that don't use a subscription model.

[pistonengine08]

If you don't want to pay the subscription, then you may not be able to do it. You're getting dangerously close to what I call "I want to do something that nobody else in the world wants to do, so why doesn't software exist that allows me to do it?" territory. Yes, I know you will argue that surely millions if not billions of people want to do this very thing, but they don't. Exactly how many rowing coaches do you think there are in the world? And out of those how many want to draw completely straight lines on video?

I don't use it, but maybe Vegas can do what you want. It's fairly sophisticated. If not, then you're probably out of options except to pay for Premiere. Yes, it sucks that Adobe has moved to this model. NOBODY is happy about that. Microsoft has been trying for years to go that way without a lot of success so it will be interesting to see if this works for Adobe or it's a colossal disaster that makes people abandon their products in favor of those that don't use a subscription model.

You're getting dangerously close to what I call "assuming what other people's prejudices are." Though your assumption is correct: I did think there were hundreds of thousands of rowing coaches aching for this one tool.

But in all seriousness, I'm just surprised is all. Considering how ubiquitous straight line tools are in image editing software, I figured it'd be a relatively trivial incorporation into video editing. Hell, the two programs I tried had freehand drawing tools in their animation features, which is pretty darn close to what I need. Trouble is I can't freehand worth a darn. I don't think I'm way out of the ballpark assuming this would exist across multiple advanced video editing software, but clearly the assumption itself was wrong

[ANK]

I have no idea if these are any good but they may be worth looking at.


http://www.motionprosoftware.com/

http://video4coach.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=4

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

[papakilo]

You might try Kinovea (http://www.kinovea.org/ )


It's free and it might do everything you want and more. I use it to analyze bowlers.

[pistonengine08]

You might try Kinovea (http://www.kinovea.org/ )


It's free and it might do everything you want and more. I use it to analyze bowlers.

Neat little tool! Unfortunate not quite it - I am trying to put together complete productions I can upload to Vimeo, with slowmotion, freeframes, narration, etc, so the athletes can watch it on their own time. But that looks fantastic for a film session during practice.