Making Videos

[Vicki]

Anyone have any recommendations for a good app for making music videos on a PC? I'd like to be able to add titles and credits, maybe lyrics. And I'm most likely to use video clips, not just a video of me sitting or standing and singing the song. Probably something like this:

I have been using Adobe Premier Elements 15 for a few years. I usually have trouble figuring out how to get it to do what I want. So I'm looking for suggestions.

[icystorm]

@Vicki -- First, wow! What a lovely voice, song, and video! Your beautiful voice reminds me a lot of the late Karen Carpenter, and I love her voice.

Regarding your question, aside from Adobe Premier that you mentioned using, there is also Shotcut and OpenShot for creating music videos that include video content and lyrics. I've toyed with the latter two and found both to be intuitive and user friendly. Yet, they are time consuming. It takes a significant amount of time to create a video. So, I send my song demos to a videographer on Fiverr. I'm not promoting that site, and there are others to consider. That's just the one I typically use. It only costs about $100 for videos like the ones on my YouTube channel, and I usually give a $25 tip to the videographer if I like the results. You can request edits, too.

When using a videographer, one is sort of at the mercy of the content that he/she retrieves and puts together. I typically make suggestions and tell him or her what I want, which helps to some extent. In my most recent music video for "She Walks in Beauty in the Night", I took a more proactive role and identified many potential free-rights video clips on pexels.com that I wanted, featuring the freelance actress I preferred, and I downloaded those. I sent all of those to the videographer and instructed him to use those clips, and he did. Yet, the end result, although good, still wasn't ideal. For example, although I did manage to obtain a LOT of videos of the one actress, there were none of her walking in a beautiful moonlit forest with the moonlight shining in her hair. That should have been a central theme in the video.

I think as AI video technology progresses, it will become possible to create custom scenes as I described. Or, I could try to contact the actress and pay her for making a few 15 second clips of scenes that I want. Honestly, creating music videos is beyond what I enjoy doing. They are somewhat fun, but for me, the real joy is writing and singing my own original songs.

Anyway, have a look at Shotcut and Openshot. Both are free and opensource. I think there are some tutorial videos for both on YouTube.

For ideas about using the more technical aspects of Adobe Premier, search for an advanced tutorial on YouTube and see how others are using it. I'm sure @Mora Amaro La Loba would be happy to make some suggestions, too.

I look forward to seeing what you produce next, and I definitely look forward to hearing you sing more in that Karen Carpenter style.

Cheers,
Joseph

[Vicki]

Thank you so much, @icystorm . I am also a Karen Carpenter fan, so she may have rubbed off on me a bit.

And thanks for the tips. I'll check out your suggestions.

Vicki

[idunno]

Anyone have any recommendations for a good app for making music videos on a PC? I'd like to be able to add titles and credits, maybe lyrics. And I'm most likely to use video clips, not just a video of me sitting or standing and singing the song. Probably something like this:

I have been using Adobe Premier Elements 15 for a few years. I usually have trouble figuring out how to get it to do what I want. So I'm looking for suggestions.

Vicki, I know someone who might be able to help you. Like us, he's an online acquaintance who finds his entertainment in the video studio more so than through playing songs, or so he has mentioned to me of late. Perhaps I could contact him and let him know you're interested in the visual aspect of music and get you two together. If you're interested, how would he contact you if he's not up for joining another bulletin board?