Firstly is it show reel or showreel, i have come across both and don't know which to use?
Can anyone suggest a programme to use to create a show reel, I've been making one using a programme on my computer using photos and clips and thought I was doing well but some of the video clips I've added freeze and jump, I don't know what I'm doing wrong because it's not all of them. So if anyone can recommend a programme I'd be really grateful.
PC or Mac? The trouble is that the freebie software on both, is designed to be simplish in operation, but results can be plagued with problems because video is technically very complicated and how the programmes deal with all the different file formats is a bit unpredictable. Better software takes a HUGE price hike, If you want a half way house, but good quality and are willing to put it on a fast computer, then all the big popular ones do a 'cut-down' version. So Adobe Premier, Sony vegas, Final Cut are things to Google and there are entry level versions of these available with less features. They're still expensive, mind you - so it could be better to pay somebody to put your material together. Show reels that look good, are often expensive beasts. It could be cheaper to look at the local Wedding video people - maybe they could do it. The software professionals use is stupidly expensive - as in £1500, sitting on a £2000 computer. Trying to get good results on your home machine with the built in software only works if you basically want to just cut a few clips together. Adding music, captions and mixes soon gets beyond what the free ones can do. For £300 or so, you can get a feature light version of the big ones. If your video camera is HD, then a low spec PC editing it is going to really stretch it. It's quite common for clips to need 'rendering' - at intervals the computer needs to go off and internally 'print' each picture. It happens when you add captions or effects, or just change a few things in time - and they have to be done one by one. On my wires laptop, a 3 minute clip took 12 hours to render when she accidentally pressed 'enter'. When it finished, she didn't like it and had to change a few things, then spend another 12 hours rendering it out again. Plenty of disk space is needed too - video eats it up like mad. The same clip on my flashy computer still takes an hour.
Windows movie maker and apple iMovie work well for freebies, but videos that have the odd jitter and glitch are quite common on lower spec machines when you try to do a little too much.
Thanks, I've been using Windows media player. A director and camera man team dd has done 3 films for (soon to be 4) have said they will make her a show reel as a thank you so I can give up now! with my computer skills that's probably a good idea.
If you need anything like this in the future download "Windows Live Movie Maker" it's so simple to use, you can insert video or photo's and add intros, captions and credits and of course set it all to music if you like, of which the volume can be increased or decreased according whatever your're setting it to. I did my dc's showreels using this and although I am most definitely NOT a professional I don't think they are too bad, if I do say so myself!
Nice that you've got a helping hand from a profssional though and I'm sure F's showreel will be fab, what with all the material!!!
with my computer skills that's probably a good idea.
