Adding transitions to videos with free software

[Cyber Akuma]

I have a bunch of videos I recorded off my camcorder (MP4/h264 format) that I want to make into a dvd, problem is if I just toss them together into my dvd authoring app they will just cut from one scene to another, so I wanted to add transitions to make them look better.

I Googled everywhere and tried everything I can think of but can't find a decent freeware app that will let me add transitions between the videos. Most of the programs I found just crashed every 2 seconds, didn't work, or had a ridiculously convoluted gui that didn't let you preview and looked like it was made in Windows 3.1.

The only thing that appeared to work was (UGH...) Windows Live Movie Make 2011....... but it was useless since it would only let me encode in WMV codecs and containers.

I tried everything I can think of but can't find a decent freeware app that will let me add transitions between the videos,can anybody here recommend anything?

[7ekno]

I do all mine with Avisynth, there's a couple of transitions and NLE plugins / packages around that make it a breeze ;)

7ek

[smok3]

http://www.kdenlive.org/ can do it (however that will not 'improve' your videos)

snap: http://imagebin.org/120002
(i think you need to follow A->B track logic, which is a bit oldish, but does the trick)

p.s. also you will have to change your os i belive.

[Cyber Akuma]

I do all mine with Avisynth, there's a couple of transitions and NLE plugins / packages around that make it a breeze ;)

7ek

I've been trying that, problem is I'm not good with AviSynth scripting.

Here is what I have some up with so far just to test it:
Vid1=DirectShowSource("SANY0143.MP4", fps=59.94)
Vid2=DirectShowSource("SANY0144.MP4", fps=59.94)

TransVenetianBlinds(Vid1, Vid2,100,type="diam")

I have a few problems with it though:

If I try to load said script in Media Player Classic (in order to preview it), first it complains about "ACM Wrapper::Output", something about not having an output pin, and then the video plays very jittery.

I tried loading the script in VirtualDub and encode it in huffyuv.... but I can't see huffyuv in my list of codecs, even though I just re-installed it to make sure. (I don't see core codec listed there either).

I loaded it in megui and it worked ok, even the one with the effects I added.

However, again, I saw no way to encode in huffyuv in megui either.

Finally, all the videos were silent. Normally I can just add the audio from the mp4 files, but the problem is I don't know how its joining them in order to do that, if I just combine all the audio tracks together they will be off more and more with each transition, is there any way to include the audio with the script and this transition effect?

I'm going to have to look around the TransAll library or play with the TransVenetianBlinds effect a bit too, its still a bit too subtle on the night videos due to how dark they are, wish my camera had a flash.

[Sharktooth]

Windows Live Movie Maker has an option to burn a DVD.

edit: never used it. just saw it still makes a WMV. however, windows 7 (home premium and ultimate) should come with Windows DVD Maker too, so you can still use MovieMaker to create your video and load it into DVD Maker to create a DVD.

[varekai]

Hello...

You could try TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4.
Not free ($99.95) but it's a very good software for camcorder projects.
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/
Transitions
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw4_tutorial/taw4_tu_tran05.html

regards

[talen9]

... or have a look at DVDSlideshowGUI (http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/index.html) :) don't be confused by the name, it lets you import video clips too and add transitions and effects. Final product is a DVD/Bluray , AVI, flash videos, etc.
And it is free (as in beer) :)