What do we need to make our first video mashup?

September 21, 2008 7:48 AM

My buddy and I need help making our first video mashup -- we've never done it before. What programs do we need to make this on a Mac?

We've got a doozy of an idea to execute, but have none of the technical know-how. Without spoiling it, we're looking to:

1) Rip scenes from a popular film that I own on DVD
2) Cut just those scenes from the film
3) Superimpose a still photo of another person's head over one of the actor's heads in said scenes.
4) Animate the mouth of that still photo as though it were speaking the dialogue -- sort of a Jib-Jab/South-Park quick-and-crappy style.

What programs do we need (both working on Macs) presuming that we're both very new to this and looking for something fairly intuitive? We're both super-familiar with Photoshop, if that knowledge translates at all. And we're only looking for something Vimeo/Youtube quality, nothing too hi-res.

Thanks!

posted by chinese_fashion to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

1. MacTheRipper.
2. MPEG Streamclip.
3/4. Probably Final Cut Studio, but it's massively expensive. Hopefully someone else can suggest a cheaper alternative.

Note: MPEG Streamclip requires the Apple MPEG-2 component.
posted by Mwongozi at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2008

Adobe After Effects will handle (3) and (4) pretty well, and uses a lot of the same UI conventions as Photoshop. Unfortunately, it's just as expensive as Final Cut Studio. I'm really not sure what non-pros use for this sort of thing.
posted by Alterscape at 8:31 AM on September 21, 2008

I'm not sure if it's a 1:1 workalike for this sort of work, but Final Cut Express is the "lite" version of FCS.
posted by Remy at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2008

The only thing I can recommend without spending a ton in time and money is to check out Blabberize which will allow you to create a flash movie of talking heads (JibJab style) from any audio source. The only part of your criteria it does not meet is the ability to past those heads onto a dvd clip. Perhaps you could get away will still photo shots from the movie? Take a few shots, create seperate animations of each "scene", mash it all together.
posted by genial at 11:55 AM on September 21, 2008

Flash is well suited to the 'puppet' style animation. Much of the editing is probably possible with iMovie which is probably on your Mac already.

It's not the easiest thing to do though, even with all the right software. It will take quite a lot of experimentation to get it right I think.
posted by sycophant at 1:08 PM on September 21, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for your help thus far, friends -- have a followup question, though. When I open a .VOB in Quicktime, it has no sound. Playing it in XVID/DIVX player works fine, though. What's happening here?
posted by chinese_fashion at 4:49 PM on September 21, 2008

MPEG Streamclip or DVDxDV Pro can convert the .VOB into a .MOV. You can't edit a .VOB, it has to be a Quicktime file.
posted by MythMaker at 12:22 AM on September 22, 2008

Seems to me you'll need an animation program of some sort to create the talking head, and a multi-layer-capable video-editing program to layer the head over the clip with a transparent background. iMovie is neither. FCExpress will do the latter well, but would be a pain to create the animation with.

I suggest checking out:

Norrkross Movie, much cheaper than FCExpress; does layers well.
Anime Studio (Create your own cartoons and animations! Create your own desktop animated shorts in the style of South Park and Jib Jab, or use Anime Studio to produce animation for film, video or streaming over the web. Bring your imagination to life!) seems like just the thing for the head.
posted by dpcoffin at 9:03 AM on September 22, 2008

This might prove useful, too…
posted by dpcoffin at 9:08 AM on September 22, 2008