Just a quick note about vids (since I've watched two hours' worth of Supernatural vids tonight)

[kate]

One of the things I've noticed about a lot of the vids I've been watching is that the songs are just Too. Damn. Long. There are a lot that start out strong but then either end up losing coherency in the middle or repeating clips over and over. Seriously, if you only have a couple minutes' worth of material, why are you choosing a song that's four and a half minutes long? Cut out the bridge if it doesn't fit. Do you really need twelve choruses? No, of course not! I find it funny that a lot of vidders (and this is just youtube, I don't believe this is anywhere near the best and the brightest of fandom, Festivids has shown me quite clearly that there are vidders who do this sort of thing, and do it well) don't think to cut the song up the way they cut clips up. You have to have an ear to do it, because you can't just mash two parts of a song together unless they work harmonically (or unless you're looking for a jump cut, which, musically is a little weird, but I'd love to see someone make work), but I imagine that most vidders have a pretty good ear, it's part of the job to make the clips and the music work together.

ETA: This wasn't really me bemoaning the entire vidding community, though I grant you it sounds like it (it was 2:30am, please cut me a teenie bit of slack). ESPECIALLY since I don't do this. I don't generally criticize (another reason this post is even here - I would never have posted this if I had been sober non-sleep-deprived). I certainly don't critique things I don't do, which, at least for now, and likely for a long time yet, is all vidders ever - even the people who made the vids I don't particularly like are obviously waaaaaaaay ahead of me, as I've never even tried it. This was me making an obvservation about vids that I was watching on one particular medium (one I think is maybe similar to FF.net in some ways? as it seems that the vids are generally of a lower quality than those of, for example, Festivids, a lot of which were hosted on vimeo and other sites (my vimeo experiences in general have been quite lovely!)). And busaikko points out below that editing music is harder than I think (which is not a surprise to me, not at all), and that a lot of folks don't have the time or resources to be able to do it effectively. If I figure out how to do it, I am going to make a giant meta post on how to edit music, because I want people to be able to do this so they can tell the stories they want to tell and aren't constrained by their resources. /ETA

I pretty much intend to edit my songs, probably fairly early on in the process and maybe some later, if there's clip trouble. I have a feeling I will be editing the shit out of the music a lot to accommodate my ideas (I tend to have ideas for parts of songs, with other parts of those same songs that are completely inappropriate for the concept).

So anyway - rec me some vids? I'm stuck on Supernatural at the moment, so of course I'd love some truly amazing stuff there (any pairing or RPF (also any pairing) or gen of either), but I won't turn down any suggestions for amazing vids. I only have a couple that come to mind, but My Brilliant Idea by lim (SGA, McShep) is my favorite to date. Plus lots of multi-fandom things by thingswithwings because xie's amazing. Also, I just recced cupidsbow's Red Right Hand, Dean/Castiel.

Comments

[clavally]

The first vid I ever saw was a Kirk/Spock vid before I even knew what slash was.

And my favorite McShep vid is this one. It was originally on youtube until they yanked the music part of the video. This one seems kind of jerky to me, but you get the picture.

And with that, you've seen all the vids I've seen and loved, lol.

[kate]

<3333 Thank you! :D :D :D

Not a vid person? Neither is soleta, though I'm not sure why, she's very visual. Maybe it's the mashup of music and scenes? Comic books are like that for me, the art/writing mashup just doesn't work for me.

And your Dean/Castiel rec is the reason for this post! I had it open in a tab and watched it, I dunno, a dozen times or so before I started clicking on the links on the side, and went through a gigantic Supernatural vid-fest. That's when I realized that soooooooooooo many of the vids use a really limited set of clips. I feel like I could write down the top twenty soulful looks between Dean and Cas and 90% of the vids would have them. It makes it difficult to tell another story, as they're all using the same material. (Obvs, my sampling is not a true sampling and is way skewed, etc.etc.etc.)

[clavally]

I am extremely picky about songs, which is funny because 2 of those vids I recc'd to you, the SPN and the SGA, I'd never heard the songs before, but after I saw the vids they become favorites for awhile. The song really has to resonate with the visuals for me. And maybe part of it is because there are only so many clips they can use? Once I see them in one vid that I like, it feels wrong to see them in another...

[kate]

Ah, yeah, I totally feel you. If the music doesn't work for me, the vid doesn't work for me, no matter how masterful. I like lots of music so that part's easy, but matching the music to the canon and vice versa is what really makes a vid for me.

That's interesting; I think after a certain point last night I really became tired of all the S4-7 Dean/Cas clips because they were just all the same. And I know there's not an infinite amount of Dean and Cas in the world and some of their moments are just really awesome and useful, but I wish there was more variety. Also the ability to completely cut Sam out of some of the vids was remarkable to me; he's such an integral part of the show (and in my mind, even the Dean/Cas relationship) that I'm just sort of stunned.

[busaikko]

Some people do edit the music, but it's... not really that easy, at least with Audacity. My job involves extensive editing of spoken audio, that's no problem, but editing a song has never worked for me (cavet: am not musical at all).

You also have to look at what the vidders are working with. Many YouTube vidders use Windows Movie Maker, which is a hideous hard-to-use program (crashes every 5 minutes, no backups)- but free and widely available. AFAIK you cannot edit music in WMM, which means you need another program to do that. Festivids and VividCon vids tend to be made by people who usually put a lot of money into having good computers and editing programs... and therefore turn out more polished-looking final products (I've always used only WMM in my vids, so I can recognize a lot of the effects that I don't have!.. like the ability to crop video or zoom in ;_; *covets* ).

Jescaflowne is one of my favorite vidders. She did Another Sunday in SGA, and Can Delight which is AWESOME (http://www.youtube.com/user/jescaflowne).

In SPN I love the crack/meta vids like Jizz In My Pants (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQptF_iCfok) and 9 to 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQnf81dQr9U). And At the Movies! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtcxK9N7Brc) My only SPN vid was crack >.> [http://www.sendspace.com/file/3aux7e while I'm in an uploading frenzy]

My favorite SGA/SG1 vid is Long-Distance Call because it captures the EPIC and the problems and the WONDER, basically why I love the show (http://archiveofourown.org/works/452273). Bironic's Soccer Practice John/Ronon is also awesome: http://bironic.livejournal.com/231839.html [And because watching all these vids made me nostalgic, here's John Sheppard in The Great Escape and the vid that's John's POV in John When He's Gone (so, um, it's graphic underage noncon and sad) Outer Space. I had this vid in my head for years,a nd collected footage from here and there - not being able to crop means that the clips have to work as is, which >.< hard!]

The thing about vidding that I love is that I get stories in my head and I can show them with words. What I hate is that unlike fic, which in the end is the same if I wrote it in Notepad or on the backs of receipts, vids are really constrained by having good tech and source material, and it shows....

[kate]

I love you! Seriously.

I hadn't meant to sound like a whiny baby whiner with a superiority complex (which I obviously did, but cat's out of the bag now). This was one of those "arg this is annoying me I want to post about it" moments that has me squinting at it sideways today because I would never have posted this if I had given it even a little bit of thought.

But now that it's here, thank you. I'm not surprised to hear that editing music is waaaaay difficult - there's a lot of layers to that shit, and even if you have amazing equipment it's got to be tough, and I think most of us just don't have the kind of equipment to make it really feasible. I totally feel you there. If I ever contribute anything ever to the vidding community, I hope for it to be a way to edit music relatively easily and cheaply so people can tell the stories they want to tell. That's the most important thing.

Thanks for the recs! :D

[busaikko]

Eh, no worries! Vidding is kind of like singing... if you're going to record a song, it's going to sound better done in a studio with an actual band. But people who have to let the music out will do that even if all they have is a cassette deck and a guitar (see also: John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, who has tape hiss on his CDs ♥).

In one sense YouTube is kind of like FF.net, in that the newbies are just discovering "Whoa, I can *do* this!" and making baby-steps vids [er... I made many of these]. But on FF.net a person can become a brilliant writer just by studying how to write and learning better grammar and spelling. On YouTube, what amaze me are the incredible vids that I know must have been made with WMM, but are just taking that "tape deck+guitar" level tech and forcing it to deliver brilliance.

Another SGA favorite! The Choice by mamoru22 (McShep), which is what's called "constructed reality" (the video shows something that didn't happen in canon *g*). And the vid Too Good to Be True digitally puts Ronon and Rodney into shots they weren't in in canon. (These two vids have some great kisses that, um, didn't happen in the canon I have *is sad*)

(Do you know Torchwood? There's a great MPreg vid for that, Papa Don't Preach (excellent use of Madonna!) by greensilver and fan_eunice.)

Um. I love vids? You should probably stop me....

ETA: And you've seen High School Never Ends by Gab, right? SG1 and SGA and a perfect match of song to clips.

[kate]

God, I do know - when you have to do something, you have to do it, whatever way you can. I can imagine the frustration of being limited by the programs and clips you have to work with. I imagine when I finally have the opportunity to start vidding I will experience this too. I am going to work on editing music first and foremost though (I have a feeling soleta will do a lot with the clips). I hope I can come up with a good way to do it. Lots and lots of practice.

Thanks for the recs, lovely! <33333

[busaikko]

I highly (lowly?) anti-rec Windows Movie Maker, but if you do end up using it, you can ask me anything ♥

[kate]

Excellent - I like anti-recs as much as recs. We'll need to look at programs and stuff and see what we can figure out.

Cheers! <3

[which]

Lamardeuse's We Can Work It Out for the much-mourned Common Law (He's a cop. He's a cop. Together they go to couple's therapy. And fight crime).

[kate]

Awesome! Thank you so much!

[sian1359]

The very first vid I felt worth saving and, therefore, still one of my most favorite Stargate Atlantis vids is I'm Losing You by Mamoru. It's from the first season and also why I fell hard for McShep when I was really meh on the series at that point (all of her Atlantis vids are worth watching):

http://www.viddish.org/vids/losing.avi

This McShep vid made me seek out the song and is one I'll watch when I'm feeling nostalgic too:

http://obfreak.parakaproductions.com/BlackFingernails.avi

Another that's just fun is Chayiana's Atlantis/Dr. Who crossover vid Lost Button:

http://chayiana.livejournal.com/26808.html


I'm not really into SPN as a fandom (or show), but since I run a slash con and make a vid show, I do keep an eye out. I assume you've seen Ash's Channel Hopping and it's sequel, but just in case, the youtube link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzQPbleK-GM

Two more vids that just kinda amazed me are:

Mama (David/Tennant/Patrick Stewart's Hamlet -- down toward the bottom of obsessive24's page:

http://obsessive24.net/videos.html

and

arefadedaway's Rolling in the Deep, a X-Men/First Class vid. The Vimeo link isn't good on the url below, but hopefully the download link is still valed -- otherwise, someone did post it from the vimeo link onto youtube (link is also below)

http://arefadedaway.dreamwidth.org/707.html?thread=2499

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHGQvM7LEGc

[kate]

Awesome - this is so great! Thank you so much! :D :D :D :D

[torachan]

Yeah, I come away from a lot of vids wishing they were shorter. I mean, I'm not big into vids in the first place, so that is part of it, but even when it's a song and source I like, there are times when I just click out halfway through because it's just the same thing over and over again and I'm bored.

[kate]

Yeah - watching things in a link-circle on youtube like I did made it even more obvious to me - they didn't know what to do with all that time. If the music could be edited to be shorter, that'd be a way better solution, I think, than trying to fill so much time.

[neotoma]

For SGA:

Another Sunday -- a shiny, happy, sparkly team vid to We Built This City

Melibabe's -- 'The Dubbing' (LOL Rodney's faces!) and 'A Little Less Conversation'

Stress -- Rodney and coffee.

For SPN:

Invincible -- when they finally come to destroy the earth, they'll have to go through you first -- Castiel the BAMF

lim's The Saints Are Coming -- angels and their daddy issues, and their terrifying ways of coping.

lim's Beat The Devil's Tattoo -- Sam and all his bad choices.

lim's The Man of a Thouand Faces -- Gabriel and his choices and failings

Actually, just lim -- her stuff is great.

Team Free Will -- Oh My God -- Dean maintains, loudly and often, that he's the only sane member of Team Free Will.

Tubthumping -- the Winchesters sure do get knocked down a lot.

Hair -- a Very Serious Real Person Study -- Jared and his hair.

Deus Ibi Est -- John Winchester, single minded soldier

Come Little Children -- Supernatural is full of creepy creepy kids.

Zion -- Caught between two worlds, Castiel mourns. By the waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept for thee, Zion.

Fall of Man -- Castiel character, Castiel/Dean. What you don't know won't kill you.

What About Everything -- Sam and Dean and life

This Is Not Our Fate : "But you and I, we've been through that... and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late." He'll do anything, for her. Even fight. Even kill. ie Why I love Gabriel/Kali, even thought it's a rare pair

Ash48's Behind Blue Eyes -- a Sam character study

Giandujakiss's A Charming Man -- Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Giandujakiss's Blister in the Sun -- oh, Chuck.

The End of the World As We Know It



The New Prophet -- pure silliness.

[kate]

OH MY GOD! This is an embarrassment of riches, thank you SO MUCH! :D :D :D

[cupidsbow]

Um. I'm a bit verklepmt at this and your SPN falling in love posts. I'm incredibly flattered, but also really surprised. I don't think I've ever been a fandom enabler through a vid before. I'm still a pretty new vidder in a lot of ways, so not a lot of people know my vidding work or follow it (in fact, I'm stupidly mopey that no-one has tried to guess my festivid(s) this year, even though I know perfectly well it's because no-one knows my vidding style *sigh*). But that aside, YAY for enabling a new fandom love! That's incredibly happymaking. :)

Your comments were useful and on the money for that vid too, so thank you!

As for what you're saying here, I'm going to take an Unpopular Stance, and agree: OMG yes, why oh why don't more people edit songs?!? There are so many vids that are awesome for the first minute, and boring after that. They would be so much better if they left the viewer wanting more.

It's true it's easier to edit songs on a professional suite like Sony Vegas, but it's totally doable with Audacity (I edited songs right from the start when I was using WMM and Audacity). Like so many things, there's a knack to it, and once you've practiced enough to get the knack, it's just another part of the job of making a vid.

I also agree so much with your observation about tired clip choices. I actually think this is a more understandable issue than not editing music, though. The thing about editing music is that you're mostly just shortening, not actually doing effect work and stuff. I have done overlays of voice and sound effects onto the music, which has its own set of issues, but mostly it's just shortening the song, which is linear and so kind of easy to think about. Some songs can't be edited because of their structure, but most contemporary songs have a lot of repetition and you can just splice them -- cut them, delete part out, and overlay the ends where the beat matches up. (That's what I did for Red Right Hand, which is soooooo long in its original form.)

I honestly think that the sweet spot for vids is around 1:40 - 2:40 mins. Occasionally an idea has enough legs to be longer, but they are the novel equivalents of the vidding world.

With visuals, it's different. At first it's really hard to get your mind around the idea that you can change them, so there's a temptation to just take the meaning of your favourite bits and build a visual painting with them. It takes a cognitive leap to realise you can actually take the original meaning, and elide it, add to it, empty it out and change it completely, just by using effects (overlaying, recolouring, changing velocity, panning/cropping, etc), changing the sequence, flipping them, reversing them, putting them in a new context, building constructed realities, etc etc etc. Some of those are completely impossible to do with WMM, so I think it would be a lot harder to make that cognitive leap using a single-track editor.

I've been vidding for about 3 years now, and I'm only just getting my head around this central aspect of visual remixing. It's fascinating to me, because it opens up all these new possibilities for clip choices. Once you're no longer focused on deploying the meanings already in the text, you can choose clips that have no canonical depth -- like a shot of hands or tail-lights on a car -- and fill it with your own momentum and meaning. And it has more meaning once you've kind of got the knack of it, because your clip choices aren't tired, and you can focus on things like internal motion or colour (rather than longing stares). That's much more interesting to me, anyway, but I do suspect my tastes aren't the norm. I'm not claiming I have that knack yet either, btw, but my favourite vidders certainly do.

And now I should really make my "how to get free pro editing software" post, right? Because no-one should have to suffer WMM after their first 3 vids. :)

[franzeska]

FWIW, a lot of the guesses come from people sitting in #vidding harassing their friends to guess more. A lot of the evidence comes from things people have let slip there too.

And, dude, that's not an unpopular stance: that's the VVC and Media Fandom party line. ;P

[cupidsbow]

Most of the time I love living in Australia, but there are moments when I just want to shake my fist like a cranky codger. Missing out on things like VVC (one day, ONE DAY, I will finally make it back to the US and attend a vidding con) and chatrooms (people are so rarely in there when I log in) are definitely two of those times.

It would be kinda awesome to actually get schooled in these things in person! ;)

[franzeska]

Some day! Some day!

[franzeska]

I'd say plenty of vidders have a terrible ear, actually. But many also slavishly adhere to the "rule" that an ideal vid should be 2.5-3 minutes and either find a song that's already the right length or make their friends edit the music. (Actually, FWIW, if anyone wants me to edit their music for them, I'd be happy to. I'd also be happy to talk someone through Audacity, not that I have a clue what I'm doing in it mostly.)

Frankly, a lot of the n00b-unfriendliness in vidding communities (and there's plenty, even if it's usually unintentional) is due to people thinking a vid watcher can't have an informed opinion. Any reader who reads a lot has both personal taste and some idea about craft even if they don't have the vocabulary. It's the same with video art. Go ahead and criticize! :)

I... uh... have a taste for long vids. LOOOOONG vids. Mostly because my sense of humor requires space for the build and because I love cheesy OTT songs that are freakin' impossible to edit. (Think Jim Steinman.) I have kind of a hate-boner for that rule about vid length. I've gotten stupid advice plenty of times that my vids needed to be short, especially in the form of my least favorite vid feedback ever: "Get in, tell your joke, get out." Grr, hiss. This saying is a Thing in some vidding circles and it drives me batty. But... I still have to agree that there were a number of Festivids this year that were repetitive and where there was either no need for them to be so long or else I was unable to detect that reason. (I sense that in at least some cases, the vid may have been repetitive on purpose, circling around similar but not identical footage in canon that was somehow contextually significant. But if I haven't seen the canon then... my loss.)

Taste for epicness notwithstanding, I'll edit the music when I need to. I used a dance hit for one of my Festivids, and that repetitive sucker would have made for an awful vid as-is. I took it from ~6 minutes to ~3. It took me a solid evening after work because it's not a type of song with a bridge and choruses (i.e. those ~3 minutes weren't the second half of the song or a single obvious section). I didn't find it hard, just time consuming, but I think that kind of editing can be just too much of a pain in the ass for many people. By the time you've done all that, unless you enjoy editing music, all the spark has gone out and you no longer want to do the vid.

You can often hide a visual jump with effects or a change in the music. Hiding jumps in the music is very hard. That spot in the song will bug people even if they don't know why. When I have to do a real butchery on something, I try to do something visually dramatic at that point to distract or do it on a big boom in the music. Or there was that time I vidded My Heart Will Go On and I didn't care that the music edit was awful.

That said, Audacity is available, free and fully functional, for anyone with OSX, Windows, or Linux. The big stumbling block is experience and degree of musical talent, not tech (unlike with a number of things in vidding where access to tech is a primary issue).

Youtube is interesting. It's the home base of most vidders these days aside from some of the LJ/Festivids/Vividcon crowd and some other people who only show at cons. It's full of the equivalent of FF.net badfic, but it's also just plain full. Of everything.

The sort of vid I would post to youtube and only youtube might take as little as 5 hours total. The kind of vid I'd send to a con might be serendipitously quick... or it might represent a hundred hours work. I don't think I've personally ever spent more than that, but people do. And lots of vidders do the equivalent of drabbles or speed writing challenges. The big difference between writing and vidding in this respect is that vid length has very little to do with time invested. The difference between a slapped-together vid and a fantastic, rewatchable vid is the difference between somebody's 20-page story they typed in a sitting and never even spell-checked and somebody's 20-page story that an editor put through the wringer.


SO. MANY. VIDDING. THOUGHTS.

[franzeska]

I pretty much intend to edit my songs, probably fairly early on in the process and maybe some later, if there's clip trouble. I have a feeling I will be editing the shit out of the music a lot to accommodate my ideas (I tend to have ideas for parts of songs, with other parts of those same songs that are completely inappropriate for the concept).

I definitely recommend editing first, preferably in Audacity (though most video editing programs will let you do a crude sound edit).

Crack vids that use pieces of different songs are pretty common. There's a great one for Doctor Who that I can't locate right now, but maybe someone else will know it. It's Christopher Eccleston changing channels (from some other source), and every channel he turns to is a different one-note joke with some doctor and some companion. Teen Wolf is full of these things too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAhOqqx8gbg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJPUaQiF1Mk

I don't have anything up online that's quite like that, but I did have a vid idea where the songs involved were much funnier as ideas than as the whole song. I too used some sound and visual effects. (The humor kind of depends on being familiar with angsty Sherlock vids and with Highlander canon though.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqiAoC34oyE

You can get stock effects for things like projectors, channel changing, film ripping, etc. from freesound.org.

[franzeska]

Sadly, I got out of SPN before I got into vidding, and I was never much into SGA. I used to not be a vid person; it was a combination of never really taking the time to watch and never finding things that suited my taste. (I only care about funny or cheesy vids most of the time, and I haven't been into most of the shows that produced big vidding fandoms in the last ten years or so. I also wasn't going to cons until recently.) It was only after I started vidding myself that I began to care about watching other people's vids, especially in fandoms I don't know. (Vidders who mostly vid and don't watch/give feedback/etc. are totally a thing just like some fic writers mostly work on their epic and don't have time for anything else. With vidding, I feel like it's considered more of a faux pas to admit it though, and it usually means you won't have an audience places like lj because so many people just watch their friends' vids.) The limited footage thing is a huge issue, especially in movie fandoms or something like Sherlock. Sometimes, vidders use it to their advantage; there's a funny Highlander vid by the Media Cannibals that parodies the extreme overuse of key Duncan/Methos clips.


If you want to go truly oldschool, Mary Van Deusen is active online and has her stuff up on a webpage. Her Temper of Revenge Miami Vice vid blew my mind. (Miami Vice specifically: she's vidded it three times, and I found this one way better than the others.) It's a longish, cheesy song with overly-specific lyrics that don't fit a modern-day setting. The first time I saw it, I didn't even like the characters involved. And yet... It's brilliant. It completely won me over. (She's kind of oldschool, so if you want to see it, you need to go to her website, search for it, and enter some captcha to get a download link. No publicly available streaming copy.)

I love most of sisabet's vids, especially if they are cheesy like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPLYowCYN4A

Many vids shown at Club Vivid are enjoyable without knowing much about a canon because they're dance vids made to be bright and flashy and destined to play in a room full of drunk people.

This is one of my favorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfPCHKcusQ

Lots of unexpected music can be awesome as long as it works on some level (humor through an incongruous choice, lyrically perfect though musically inappropriate, or whatever). One of my favorites from last Festivids that I still rewatch is this Scarlet Pimpernel vid: http://archiveofourown.org/works/332965

[franzeska]

Oh, and FWIW, the vidding equivalent of "The pit of voles is nothing but purple prose badfic with mary sues" is "Youtube is full of vids with soft focus, too many effects, loooong clips, the same clips in every vid, and five+ minute Celine Dion songs."

On the one side, you have 'youtube vidders' who are like "Why should I care about spellcheck aspect ratio? It's a hobby!!!"; on the other, you have VVC/lj vidders who are shaking their canes and shaking their heads over the kids these days. (And on the other, other side, you have people going "Youtube is a useful tool, goddamnit, stop being such snobs.")

[franzeska]

But wait! You mentioned vidding, so I still can't shut up!

I would love to see more (and more!) people try out vidding. It doesn't have to be expensive, and I think it would be more welcoming to both newbiews and viewers with more different tastes if we could knock a bit more of the mystique out of it.


Ripping: OSX - Mac the Ripper (fully functional shareware); Windows & Linux I have no clue about, but there are plenty of similar programs

Clipping: OSX, Windows - MPEG Streamclip (freeware, but you need to buy the MPEG-2 Playback component for $20); Linux I'm not sure about, and some people don't need to clip depending on what kind of editor they're using

Audio editing: OSX, Windows, Linux - Audacity (freeware)

Video editing: The big options are iMovie/WMM vs. expensive pro programs vs. freeware. Blender is freeware for OSX/Windows/Linux. It's confusing and intended primarily for other uses, but vidders have adopted it, and their final products look great. Lightworks is freeware for Windows; I haven't checked it out. On the comes-with-your-computer side of things, old iMovie was pretty good, new iMovie is suckier, and WMM is notoriously dreadful. Piracy is usually not a great option for Macs, so the options are that expensive-ass Adobe suite, the discontinued Final Cut Express (what I use now), or the reasonably priced Final Cut Pro X ($299 and it's a bargain for the functionality). Windows offers much greater ease of piracy. Sony Vegas is the program I see mentioned most on Youtube, and I'll eat my hat if most of those vidders own it legitimately. For the less larcenous, Windows offers a greater range of products and prices than Mac (but I hear lots of them suck, so shop around). Adobe products are popular. I'm not familiar with the rest of the laundry list of NLEs for Windows. If you have a budget for nice software, there are options in what I consider a reasonable range (a few hundred dollars). If you don't want to spend that much, I would look for a free option rather than pay for a crummy product.

And you do want to get hold of a NLE (non-linear editing system) if you can. WMM and iMovie mean that you kind of have to start at the beginning and work to the end; any time you edit something, it messes up all of your timing after that in the vid. NLEs also let you have more than one video track, so some effects are easier and many more effects are possible in the first place. You can do quite a bit in WMM/iMovie, but the amount of time and frustration you'll save by getting another program is so worth it despite the steeper learning curve on most of them.

[kate]

OMG, seriously, I have been sweating my Ante Up fic this whole time, and the only treat I allowed myself was checking email, so watching these comments come in has been HUGELY inspiring. Much more responsive and grateful responses to come when I'm not completely braindead. But THANK YOU - for all the info and opinions beyond the inspiration. <3

[franzeska]

Man... I had all of these Grand Plans for vids for Ante Up... This fucking year, man! It's like the universe hates us all!