Editing software for windows 7

r*oc

Could anyone tell me if there is any software (free) available to help with the following....
I regularly record clips of my son playing football. I'm trying to create a video of multiple clips of him in action but i do not know how to identify him on the pitch.
Iv seen videos on youtube of similar but theres some editing tool that helps identify a single person within a team.
Can anyone help me with this please.
Im also trying to find out how i can mute the audio of these clips & just have a music track play. (i know how to add music track, but not how to mute audio of match)

mp22

google says
https://www.google.ie/search?q=free+video+editing+software&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gws_rd=cr&ei=1wN8V6-dLKqXgAa4oZagBg

Fysh

First, the simple stuff - in terms of muting the audio from the match, it is definitely possible to do but the way you do it will depend on the tool. Some tools will let you import a file and treat the audio & video from that file separately, so you can just delete the audio part and then add music or whatever else you want to add. Others, like Windows Live Movie Maker, don't have this ability - you can work around this by looking for a demultiplexer tool to split out the video stream from the audio stream, but tbh unless you're particularly interested in video editing I wouldn't bother, it can turn into a lot of faff. You could do worse than check out OpenShot - as far as free tools go, it's pretty good.

Tracking the players on the pitch is...complicated. Depending on what your footage looks like, it may not even be possible to do. The more advanced (and generally expensive) editing suites can do some pretty sophisticated object-tracking to apply effects to them (see this blog post for an example), but that assumes continuity of footage. If you're talking about a football pitch with a number of similar-looking children where you can't always tell who's who, and in particular footage with a moving frame, I'm not sure you'll be able to do this at all without very advanced software - off the top of my head the only software I've read about which can do that kind of person tracking is either the software developed in-house by the Metropolitan Police in London to track people moving between different CCTV camera coverage areas, or some of the commercial software used by broadcasters covering sporting events. I could be wrong though, this part of your question is outside the area of video editing I normally dabble in.

Edit: Unless what you mean is, how to identify him to the viewer, such as by putting an object over him? If that's the case, ignore the paragraph above. This can be done, but the way in which it's done depends on the tool you're using - some have built-in effects for this sort of thing, in others you'll use chroma-key mapping (green-screen blending) to overlay an image of some sort (e.g. a big red arrow) onto the video, and then use keyframing to manually set the location of the image for each frame of the video.

Can you post a link to a youtube video of the sort of thing you're trying to do, and details of what tool you're using? It'll make it much easier to give you useful advice.

r*oc

mp22... thanks for that link, its actually a good and easy enough program to learn & use.

Fysh... thanks for your advice & help. With regards to the player tracking, i know iv worded it wrong what it is im looking for.
Im attaching a sample youtube link of what it is im looking to find. In this video, when the scene appears that the editor wants us to follow the movement of a player, he simply highlights or circles the player for about 2 seconds so we know who to look at. its this feature/tool im hoping to find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCPZ_zQdg2w

you'll see at 22 seconds into video the type of thing im looking for.
Hoping you can advise some more. Thanks in advance.:)

Fysh

Gotcha

Yes, what you want to do isn't too difficult. You'll most likely be using something called compositing - this is where you add an overlay image or video and blend it with your main video. It's not too difficult to do in the right video editors, but it can be tricky to figure out the first time you try it.

If you want to have your overlay move around the video to follow a moving player, you can do this using key frame animation. Again, this isn't normally too difficult (depending on your video editor) but it can be tricky to figure it out the first time.

What video editing program are you using? Or are you trying to find the right tool to use before getting started?

r*oc

Hi Fysh,
The program im trying is Wondershare, Filmora.
Iv had a good look at the tutorial & although it does give a brief description of Overlay features and iv just tried out a couple of them, they dont seem to do what im hoping for.
I know im a complete amateur at this so any help is much appreciated.

Fysh

Have a read through the Green Screen tutorial, it might help. Once you have the chroma-key/green screen part done, you need to be able to control where the overlay is positioned in the frame, what size it is, and how it moves.

The size and position parts should be things you can set on the overlay clip once you have it in your timeline - the size will probably be done using a zoom slider; the position might be done as absolute numerical co-ordinates, or by moving a frame outline around the screen, it depends.

The movement part is done using a key frame animation. This means is picking out points on your timeline where you want the overlay to be at a particular spot (the "key frames"); the preferred option is for the editing tool to then automatically figure out how to animate the transition between each set of key frames, so that in the end you get a smooth movement. I can't find any obvious indication of how to do this in Filmora from looking for tutorials, and the help file doesn't mention it. If my explanation isn't very clear, take a look at this tutorial video - it's for Sony Movie Studio rather than Filmora, but should give you a good idea of what keyframing is; hopefully it'll help you figure out whether it's possible to do it in Filmora or not.

r*oc

Hi Fysh, i'm gonna bury my head in this for a while. You've been extremely helpful & for that, i thank you so so much.
Thanks again pal :):)