Five Great Video Tricks, Tips & Hacks

Tired of having your home movies look like the Bigfoot video? Want to boost your style-to-substance ratio? Desperate to make your massively overpowered video-editing software work for you? Below is a short series of video hacks gleaned from a variety of web resources to help your next video look less like Ed Wood and more like Steven Spielberg.

• Videoramas: Anyone can use the panorama-stitching program that comes with your PnS digital camera, but what about a video panorama, or a “videorama?” Putting together several well framed moving images can create quite an effect and animate an entire landscape. Photojojo’s walkthrough shows you how to best stitch together your own videorama, executed beautifully in a recent Rocketboom Casual Friday.


• PodsafeAudio.com: Don’t want to get hassled by the RIAA and don’t have any musical friends? Providing “music for the revolution,” PodsafeAudio.com operates under the Creative Commons license and connects musicians with tunes with videomakers with empty soundtracks. A great way to discover new music, the service offers a comprehensive browsing and searching system so you can be sure you find the perfect score for your Hi8 masterpiece.


• Zamzar.com: Whether you’re pulling video off of YouTubeX.com or downloading clips from your cell phone, this free online file converter can make nearly any video format compatible with your editing software. The catch: Zamzar is limited to 100 megs.


• FindSounds.com: When low on finances, the Foley artist is going to be your first budget cut. Thankfully, Findsounds.com offers a search engine geared specifically for sound effects and musical instrument samples. From laser blasts to llama bleats, you can find everything for your Andean space opera here.


• Machinima: The deliciously geeky portmanteau of “machine” and “animation cinema,” machinina is an art form unto itself as well as a cheap and easy way to get what ILM would charge millions to render. Machinima.com not only hosts many machinima creations, but also has helpful walk-throughs to help you capture, compress, and publish your own Red vs. Blue or WoW music video.

So be your own cinéma vérité filmmaker and get out there with your MiniDV cam and skateboard-cum-dolly and take your video production to the streets.