How to make a Farscape Music Video

There's more than one way to make a music video. The editing software ranges from free programs, downloaded from sites such as download.com, to very expensive professional applications. I like using Apple's QuickTime Pro because it is rather cheap (about $30) and gives the user decent control over the compression. Compression is key - if the video is too large few scapers will bother to download it. If you are buying a new computer system and think you will be making videos, I suggest looking at a Mac. Even the cheapest iMac now comes with everything you need, particularly the incredible i-Movie software, to make music videos and export them to the web or a vcr.

Not getting very detailed, this is how I make a music video:

I capture the video on my PC using an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro card. It cost me about $100 in the summer of 2000 and the price has gone down since then. I bought the card with 8 megs of memory. If I had it to do over, I would have spent the extra money for the 32 meg card.

The card converts the video clip into .AVI format. I then compress the video using the Indeo 5 compressor, with all the controls set for highest quality.

Step 2. I open the clips in QuickTime Pro. You can edit, copy, and paste the clips in the order of your choice. If you want transitions and other effects in your video I suggest downloading QuickEditor for Windows or Mac. The basic version is free. Note: If you have QuickEditor there is no reason to buy QuickTime Pro.

Step 3. The audio. You can paste the audio track using .WAV or .MP3s. It works best if your video is the same time length as the audio track. You can edit the audio track by opening it in a separate player and removing the parts you don't like.

Step 4. At this point, you have a basic music video, but its size is probably too large. Here are general settings I use when exporting the clip:

Video: Sorenson Video
Quality: Low to Medium
Frame Rate: 10 - 15 for most videos, 24 for fast paced clips
Key Frame Rate: 20 for most, 10 -15 for fast paced clips
Data Rate: 30 Kbytes/sec. Higher for fast paced clips
Sound: QDesign Music 2
Sample Rate: 32 kHz works fine, 41 kHz for higher quality
16 bit stereo sound for music; 8 bit mono for dialogue

Here are the exact settings I used for the high quality version of Bed of Roses:

Video: Sorenson Video
Quality: Medium
Frame Rate: 24
Key Frame Rate: 20
Data Rate: 35 Kbytes/sec.
Sound: QDesign Music 2
Sample Rate: 48 kHz ; bit rate of 40; 16 bit stereo sound

You may want to experiment with the settings to get the exact effect you desire. You should expect 1.5 - 2.5 meg files per minute of video, depending on picture and audio quality. Hope this helps. There are tutorials at www.apple.com/QuickTime that you may find interesting.

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