URGENT: Software for creating Documentary!!

[ShankJ]

Me and my friends are planning on making a documentary for a competition but have no idea on how to go about the editing. We'l be needing softwares for the following-
1. Adding caption to the video, for eg. The names of the people who are being intervied
2. Subtitles(for translating dialogues which are in regional language)
3. Merging different sections of video.
4. Adding the narration(narration will be done seperately and added to the video)
5. Adding the credits.

I would me highly grateful if you could suggest me these softwares and even the link to some video editing tutorials as I'm running highly short on time(got just 2 days for the editing and creating the 15 min documentary)..

 

[dashing.sujay]

Adobe Premiere

 

[ShankJ]

Does it do all the above tasks??

 

[Flash]

Does it do all the above tasks??

Most professionals use this for video editing.
You can also give a try on Adobe Aftereffects for video composting.

Digit once gave tutorials for both, but can't remember the DVD editions.

 

[flyingcow]

Most professionals use this for video editing.
You can also give a try on Adobe Aftereffects for video composting.

Digit once gave tutorials for both, but can't remember the DVD editions.

Sony vegas pro...much easy to use...But Adobe and Sony editing softwares are premium...but you can get the trial version as well...

Most professionals use this for video editing.
You can also give a try on Adobe Aftereffects for video composting.

Digit once gave tutorials for both, but can't remember the DVD editions.

I guess you will need some land and a shovel for video composting

 

[rijinpk1]

it is little difficult to understand both premiere and after effects. you have to look at the tutorials available on youtube.

 

[Vyom]

Oh come on... Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas have a STEEP learning curve. But OP just have two days (less than that now if I am not wrong), and a video to edit, which in itself is not a simple task, no matter how experienced you are in video editing.

@ShankJ: If this is your first time trying a video editing program, your best bet is to use default video editing tool that comes with Windows XP (and through a download on genuine Windows 7): Windows Movie Maker.

The UI of WMM is very simple yet offers a lot of customizations. There's a timeline. You add a clip on the timeline. You can trim the clip from both sides of it. You can add more clips to the existing clip, and trim those. Add fade-in, fade-out between clips. Add transitions between the clips. Adjust or replace the sound. Add text in the form of subtitles before/after/on top of the clip. Text added in the very last can be given "Credit" effect. In the last, export the clip in whatever format, mostly .WMV.
There. Done. (Its not simple as I made it sound.)

Please note Movie Maker is just a basic video editing software, but is good for someone who are new to video editing arena, or for one-of tasks, which require just a quick edit. Learning professional software like Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas come after you know the basics of video editing, and requires you to practice a lot even to do the most basics of tasks. Its worth, but .. later, when you have apt time.

 

[ShankJ]

I seriously hope this default one works(though i have downloaded the adobe one also.. I need it for a documentary competition in one of the IIT..

 

[Vyom]

Of course it will work. Its a dead simple video editing tool.
The only problem you could run into with Windows Movie Maker, is if you import a format of video which WMM doesn't understand. But you can easily workaround that problem by converting your clips in a format, that the tool does support.

Be warned, editing a video requires very much hit and trial, if you are not clear what you want to achieve. So keep a simple flow in mind, and keep the editing going. In case you think a particular effect is not coming out correct, just continue further, and come back to that effect later. Spending too much time on one tweak can prove lethal, since you have a very small deadline now.

Good luck editing. And oh, don't forget to keep saving the progress of editing by saving it, since it's a blunder one does. A small glitch, or crash can lead to hours of efforts in vain. And don't move your media files around once you import them in the WMM. Since, even after you import the media files in WMM, it refers to the actual files, until you export the final file.

 

[ShankJ]

I'm done with the shooting part and would be doing the editing from tonight.. I got today and tommoeiw and i seriously hope it comes out good!!

 

[rijinpk1]

all the best buddy

 

[digik]

Very good advice @Vyom. I wanted to add his reputation but couldnot find how to do it.

 

[Flash]

Very good advice @Vyom. I wanted to add his reputation but couldnot find how to do it.

You can't. There's no REP feature here.

 

[ShankJ]

The problem I'm presently facing is that we have got a lot of background noise in the video and we need to remove some of it while keeping the other audio.. Any software to remove just the disturbances and not the entire audio!!

 

[Anorion]

^wavepad
Can also try recording again the sounds and using it over the video (dubbing). Do this after editing

 

[digik]

@Gearbox I think earlier there was rep feature in this forum. If so, why did they remove it?

 

[Vyom]

The problem I'm presently facing is that we have got a lot of background noise in the video and we need to remove some of it while keeping the other audio.. Any software to remove just the disturbances and not the entire audio!!

Chances are that due to short deadline, and being a noob in video editing department, you must have dropped the idea of creating the documentary.
But did you?

 

[frostbite]

Just try to keep everything minimal and elegant, decent and professional fonts, smooth transitions. Its okay if you dont put in much effects, but whatever you do put should be perfect. Less effects are better than incomplete effects.

Windows Movie Maker should do the job. Vegas and rest take time to learn and are much complicated in comparison to WMM.