Copyright Titles in Video

[ListerDiesel]

Has anyone had any experience with successfully editing a video file and adding a copyright notice or other text?

We've edited down the videos we took at Portland last year, and have got a larger number of smaller files.

We normally use Digimarc for still image watermarking, but that's no good for video.

We have bought and tried three different packages for video, and they all seem to fall flat on doing what we need them for. One was absolute cr*p and just didn't work at all, one garbled the sound track and the last one inflates the files.

Typically, a 2mb .wmv file ends up bloated to 4mb just by adding a 20-character line of text, which is nonsense.

I'd like to hear of anyone else's experiences please.

Files that we have are all in .wmv format, all widescreen (now, they were PC screen aspect ratio before) and all have audio tracks.

Peter

[Harry]

I am presuming that you mean copyrighting as in titling?

I use Windows Movie Maker and in my titles at the end, you will see © - that is done by holding down the Alt key and entering 0169 within the titler text. I guess I'm just going to have to purchase a new video camera and quit messing around with using a still camera to take videos! I also find that with Youtube, it's best to use the absolute maximum storage format and then let Youtube break it down to size. It takes longer to upload to them, but it gets every last drop of quality that way and with compression, we need EVERY last drop of quality.

[Craig A]

Hey Peter......sounds like you need this.......

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37672

[ListerDiesel]

Thanks, Craig and Harry.

It isn't the actual character, I was using the Alt0169 to get the © character OK, it is the actual putting of the text into the video that seems to be a hassle.

It does seem strange that so many of these software packages cannot deliver a decent output.

The one we used to break up the original VOB files was brilliant at doing that, but lousy in other areas. It gave variable frame sizes that worked really well and allowed us to select what frame size we wanted, but couldn't do more simple tasks. It was probably the best of the ones we have paid for so far.

Trialling these packages works up to a point, but you only get all the features when you buy them, and they are not deadly expensive, thanks heavens!

Peter

Peter

[Harry]

Try out the Windows Movie Maker if you have it on your system. It appears to come standard with XP and sometimes simpler is better. I used VideoWave for a while, but it was more complicated than what I needed. Of course, what I have done to this point was off my Cannon G5 camera so perhaps WMM is a match for it. If you are into professional quality cameras and video, you may be into an iMac or eMac with iMovie installed. Final Cut Pro is another one. I'm no longer into the broadcast quality stuff.

[ListerDiesel]

Windows Movie Maker is XP-only, so we cannot use that (all our stuff is Win2kPro) but thanks for the suggestion.

We finally got it done, but only after we bought or trialled 8 packages that were all supposed to do the job.

Videowave was a big disappointment for me, especially as that was one of the packages that we paid for...

First of the revised videos is at:

http://www.stationary-engine.co.uk/V...rtlandQK75.wmv

This was a .wmv video to start with, and it was output as .wmv also.

One package took a 2mb file, added the text and output a 500mb file!!

Crazy stuff out there and so many incompatible files and formats.

Peter