I’m finally ready to put in the time and effort to move into POV animations
beyond animated gifs.  You know how there are some people who justifiably
take pride in managing their economic resources in a particularly efficient
manner?  Well, I’m not one of those; I’m just a plain ol’ cheapskate looking
for freeware or really-cheap-ware. As much as I’m NOT a Windows fan, I’ll
probably be using that OS as I have Windows machines available everywhere I
might want to work.

Stephen’s suggestion (Thanks) with regard to TMPEGenc would seem to solve
the MPEG problem.

Several freeware programs are available to assemble individual frames into
an AVI. If anyone knows of a good reason to use one or avoid another, I
would be grateful for the input.

What I’m REALLY hoping for is useful advice to compress my learning curve
(along the t axis) with respect to working with SOUND on the cheap.  Does
anyone have anything good or bad to say about the freeware programs “T@B
ZS4 Video Editor” or “Jahshaka”?  Is there a better program that I’ve
missed?  Does anyone on know of any “must read” sites / sources that I
should avail myself of?

Many thanks in advance for replies.

Regards,
-Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

"Mike the Elder" <zerozerozerozero [at] wyanorg> wrote:
> Does
> anyone have anything good or bad to say about the freeware programs “T@B
> ZS4 Video Editor” or “Jahshaka”?  Is there a better program that I’ve
> missed?  Does anyone on know of any “must read” sites / sources that I
> should avail myself of?
>

Don't know about either program.  My personal preference is Audacity
(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).  Multiple platforms, good support, I
have no complaints...

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

Post a reply to this message

"Dan Byers" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> Don't know about either program.  My personal preference is Audacity
> (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).  Multiple platforms, good support, I
> have no complaints...

I'll check it out.
Thanks,
-Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

Dan Byers wrote:
> "Mike the Elder" <zerozerozerozero [at] wyanorg> wrote:
>> Does
>> anyone have anything good or bad to say about the freeware programs “T@B
>> ZS4 Video Editor” or “Jahshaka”?  Is there a better program that I’ve
>> missed?  Does anyone on know of any “must read” sites / sources that I
>> should avail myself of?
>>
> 
> Don't know about either program.  My personal preference is Audacity
> (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).  Multiple platforms, good support, I
> have no complaints...
> 
> --
> Dan
> GoofyGraffix.com

I second audacity.  Great program, easy to learn, easy to add-in 
plugins.  Handles recording, editing and outputting audio files like a 
pro.  I've worked with a few commercial products, and audacity is equal 
to those.  "Professional" level software is probably better, but within 
the consumer category their isn't really any for-purchase software that 
I'd call better.

In terms of the normal stuff we basic users do - background & hum 
removal, balancing, normalizing, & pitch adjustment -  audacity does it 
all with a click of a button.

Bryan

Post a reply to this message

Bryan Heit <bjheit [at] NOSPAMucalgaryca> wrote:
> Dan Byers wrote:
> I second audacity.  Great program, easy to learn, easy to add-in
> plugins.  Handles recording, editing and outputting audio files like a
> pro.  I've worked with a few commercial products, and audacity is equal
> to those.  "Professional" level software is probably better, but within
> the consumer category their isn't really any for-purchase software that
> I'd call better.
>
> In terms of the normal stuff we basic users do - background & hum
> removal, balancing, normalizing, & pitch adjustment -  audacity does it
> all with a click of a button.
>
> Bryan

Thanks for the input.  I will certainly be checking out Audacity.  What I
was REALLY hoping to learn more about (I probably could have worded my
original question much better) is free or cheap software for adding a
soundtrack to an animation created in POV-Ray and converted to MPEG.

Regards,
Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

Mike the Elder wrote:
> Bryan Heit <bjheit [at] NOSPAMucalgaryca> wrote:
>> Dan Byers wrote:
>> I second audacity.  Great program, easy to learn, easy to add-in
>> plugins.  Handles recording, editing and outputting audio files like a
>> pro.  I've worked with a few commercial products, and audacity is equal
>> to those.  "Professional" level software is probably better, but within
>> the consumer category their isn't really any for-purchase software that
>> I'd call better.
>>
>> In terms of the normal stuff we basic users do - background & hum
>> removal, balancing, normalizing, & pitch adjustment -  audacity does it
>> all with a click of a button.
>>
>> Bryan
> 
> Thanks for the input.  I will certainly be checking out Audacity.  What I
> was REALLY hoping to learn more about (I probably could have worded my
> original question much better) is free or cheap software for adding a
> soundtrack to an animation created in POV-Ray and converted to MPEG.
> 
> Regards,
> Mike C.

Ahh, I see.

Unfortunately, I don't think a single piece of software exists which 
allows you to go directly from the image series outputted by povray to 
what you want in one step.

I use virtualdub to load the images and save them as an avi.  There are 
lots of other tools out there that can do this; I think you mentioned 
one of them in your first post.

As for adding audio, what you're basically looking for is a simple video 
editor.

One option is windows movie maker, which I think allows the addition of 
audio.

Other options include Jahshaka (open source, getting to be pretty good, 
multi-platform), Cinerella (linux only), and LiVes (linux only). 
Unfortunately, most of these tools are still in the development stage 
and are not as easy or as stable as commercial software.

That said, I've use all three of the above videos to do basic video 
editing with success.  Jahshaka seems to have the most potential at this 
point, although cinerella is the most complete and capable (and confusing).

Bryan

Post a reply to this message

"Mike the Elder" <zerozerozerozero [at] wyanorg> wrote:
> Thanks for the input.  I will certainly be checking out Audacity.  What I
> was REALLY hoping to learn more about (I probably could have worded my
> original question much better) is free or cheap software for adding a
> soundtrack to an animation created in POV-Ray and converted to MPEG.
>
> Regards,
> Mike C.

VirtualDub can do that. However it *does* re-encode the video if you add
sound to it, which obviously worsens the visual quality. VirtualDub is
free.
I believe I've read somewhere that Tmpgenc can also add sound to an
animation, but I'm not positive.
And Audacity is really good. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Bryan Heit <bjheit [at] NOSPAMucalgaryca> wrote:
......
> That said, I've use all three of the above videos to do basic video
> editing with success.  Jahshaka seems to have the most potential at this
> point, although cinerella is the most complete and capable (and confusing).
>
> Bryan

Thanks again.
It's looking like using Audacity for soundtrack production and Jahshaka for
getting it attached to the MPEG file is going to be my "Plan A".

Regards,
Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

"Grassblade" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> I believe I've read somewhere that Tmpgenc can also add sound to an
> animation, but I'm not positive.

Tmpgenc can defiantly add an audio track when encoding your images to a
mpeg.

Post a reply to this message

Thanks to Grassblade and Stephen for the helpful info.
Regards,
Mike C.

Post a reply to this message