Hello there,

Last year, for a school project, a few of my friends and I made a short (about 20 minutes) movie (my character was Benny the mexican alien... long story). This year, because of the good comments we recieved about the first, we're thinking of making a sequel. Sure, sequels often lose something of the original, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

This time, however, we'll need a few more special effects, one could say. Our last movie was very props-and-camera-angle in the way of visuals, so we're trying to aime a little higher this time - all while keeping the amusing sense of surreal cheesyness we had at first.

So that brings my to my inquiry. Are there any free programs that break film up into frame-by-frame pieces, which we could then use our awesome MS paint/Photoshop skills to edit and add some not-very-subtle special effects? Free is the key here, and easy to use would also be helpful. Currently, I've got Avid Free DV for movie editing, and I'm not too shabby with it (except titles, I can't manage to make titles). We've also, of course, got Windows Movie Maker. OS is Windows XP, since I've noticed a lot of movie editing software is Mac only.

Any programmes or techniques that come to mind?

Many thanks,

Benny

Hi Benny,
Don't know whether I can help here as I have Prem Elements not Avid, but here goes, in Elements you can take a snapshot of each frame of the timeline,.... put them into a file so you can import the frames one by one into Photoshop, do what you want to do to the frames, then put them back in the right sequence in the timeline above the original, the altered frames will play instead of the original

That would work for me in Prem, perhaps some Avid users might be more help.

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Alan Hodkinson
at
Viking Video

3.2 Ghz P4 800FSB CPU, 1Gb DDR400 PC3200 memory, 128Mb AGP ATI Radeon 9200 DDR Graphics, 40 Gb H/D, 250 Gb H/D, NEC ND-2510 dual layer DVD 8X, LG Gsa-4081B DVD, Creative soundblaster live, Windows XP SP1, Premiere 6, Premiere Elements, Dv500.

In Premier as well as After Effects you can export as film strip file. Not sure if Avid can do this, but if so its alot easier than single frames because there all in one file, which needs to be opened with Photoshop.

Peace
Chain Lube

Why don't u download 30 day trials of Adobe premiere elements and Adobe After Effects 6.5 or whatever version is out now? They would certainly enhance your production with you having access things like bluescreen and wire removal a la The Matrix films. Bluescreen - quick rundown - go into your local department store - bed linen section - get the largest bed sheet you can find - not dark blue or light blue - somewhere inbetween - take home - iron out wrinkles - attach to wall - get some lights to illuminate it evenly - put actor in front - watch out for shadows - point camera at actor - record - transfer to computer and insert background of your own.

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