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The latest version of
muvee. autoProducer6, edits your videos
for you automatically. It can mix video
and digital still images of numerous
file formats and quality levels with a
music soundtrack. It reviews and
corrects your video footage, still
images and graphics, cutting them to a
your favorite music tracks. The software
decides what goes where and then, adds
effects and titles, all in just a matter
of minutes. In fact, it should take less
than an hour to create your first cool
looking muvee.
All About muvee
Once you have downloaded
and installed the product on your
Windows computer (muvee runs on Windows
2000, XP and the new Vista), you begin
by selecting and inputting your video,
still, graphic and audio components.
You can capture video directly from your
DV camcorder via Firewire. You can also
import video from other cameras and
devices by first moving it from the
device to your computer’s hard drive.
Muvee autoProducer6
supports a wide range of video types –
from MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, DV, AVI, WMV,
ASF, MOV (QuickTime), DivX and even 3GP
from cell phones. You can also import an
assortment of still images formats such
as JPEG, JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF.
For audio, you can use MP3, WAV, AAC and
WMA.
On the right side of the
Media Panel, there are three buttons –
one for inputting video, one for
inputting still images and one for
capturing video from a camcorder. You
use standard Microsoft Windows commands
to load your video and still image files
into the Media Panel. If you use lots of
sources, and want to see them all, you
can use the Expand Media Panel button to
make the panel full screen.
Once you have all your
visual components loaded into the Media
Panel, you can then choose what music
you want. You can use one or several
music tracks for your video. When you
create your muvee, you can mix and
change volumes of the music tracks as
well as the original audio from the
video. You can also record and mix in a
separate narration track.
The next step is to pick
a style. The trial program ships with 8
“superstyles”. However, when you buy the
full program, you get a package of 24
additional “core” styles included as
well. These will need to be separately
downloaded and installed. And if those
styles are not enough, you can purchase
and download many more “style packs”
from the online muvee site.
You then go the muvee
Personalize section to select the length
of the music. You match the muvee to the
length of the song or pick a specific
length. You can create your own opening
titles and closing credits with a
variety of font and animation options to
select from. You can also use the
video/pictures tab to make additional
choices regarding how you want your
muvee to be created. I’d recommend
coming back to that tab after you have
created the first couple versions that
muvee creates for you.
Once you have those
options selected, you are ready to make
a basic muvee. Hit “Make muvee” The
program then goes through your selected
videos, stills, graphics and music and
analyzes them to find people, faces,
movement, etc. This is the true magic
of muvee. They have made an assumption
that what most of us want to see in a
video are the faces of our friends and
family. If that is not true of your
video, you can use the Face Bias tab in
the video/pictures tab in the
Personalize section to adjust that
emphasis.
This analysis process can
take a few minutes depending on how much
video and images you are working with
and how powerful your computer is. You
can go get a cup of coffee or do a short
chore. For example, muvee took about 10
minutes to analyze an 18-minute video
clip of my daughter's birthday party
with my 2.33 GHz Windows XP computer.
When muvee is done analyzing the raw
video, stills, music, etc., it will
create a finished muvee for you that
combines your video clips, still images,
titles and music tracks with the style
you have selected.
The good news is once a
particular piece of source video has
been analyzed, it won’t need to be
analyzed again. If you decide to try a
different style, the program does it
almost immediately. If you add
additional stills, graphics or music to
your project, only those new pieces will
need to be analyzed.
If you don’t like the
muvee, you can hit make muvee again and
it will create a slightly different
version based on the same style you
selected. Or if you want to try
something completely different, just
pick a different style and make another
muvee. You can save each one with a
different name and then make a new
version based on your choice of video,
stills and music.
Once you like your
finished muvee, you save it as a project
first, and then hit the muvee share
button – on the far right at the bottom
of the screen. A window opens up that
enables you to select among your saved
muvees and then export them to a variety
of formats. You can save it for computer
playback in a variety of file formats;
you can save it for playback on a pocket
PC or a phone. You can save it for web
streaming as either a windows media file
or a QuickTime file, or you can burn it
to a disk. You can burn DVDs, video CDs
or super video CDs. The disc-burning
program allows you to combine a bunch of
muvees onto a single disc – assuming
that there is space. You can also pick
from a selection of menus and create
your own disc titles.
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