Video help

[Touring Mars]

OK, so this could go elsewhere, but I guess it is more 'art' & 'photography'/camera related than anything else so I'll put it in here...

I'm about to take possession of my first ever HD camcorder, with a view to creating some music performance videos... the main thing I do is vocal harmonies, and most songs I write rely on two vocal parts. Hence, I had the idea of shooting two videos and then editing them together in a split screen format to make it look like there's two of me performing the same track at the same time. I don't even know what you'd call this technique, but ultimately it should involve shooting the same shot twice, using the left hand side of one video and the right hand side of the other.

Anyway, I'm looking for some free (or at least cheap) software that will allow me to do that. Furthermore, I will be recording the audio separately and then overdubbing the video with the audio track. Does anyone know what kind of software might be good for this?

On a related note, I am a novice in all aspects of video production and shooting, although I reckon I will need to do something about lighting since I am planning to stick two videos together seamlessly, and that might be tricky with variable lighting in the room, so I may need to look at some (cheap) lighting solutions as well... again, if anyone has any tips then that would be great...

 

[TB]

After a brief look, you could play around with Windows Movie Maker. It's not going to be as feature-rich as other programs, I'm sure, but it appears that it can do what you want. I can't say for sure, though.

As for lighting, perhaps some photography softboxes?

 

[TeamCZRRacing]

OK, so this could go elsewhere, but I guess it is more 'art' & 'photography'/camera related than anything else so I'll put it in here...

I'm about to take possession of my first ever HD camcorder, with a view to creating some music performance videos... the main thing I do is vocal harmonies, and most songs I write rely on two vocal parts. Hence, I had the idea of shooting two videos and then editing them together in a split screen format to make it look like there's two of me performing the same track at the same time. I don't even know what you'd call this technique, but ultimately it should involve shooting the same shot twice, using the left hand side of one video and the right hand side of the other.

Anyway, I'm looking for some free (or at least cheap) software that will allow me to do that. Furthermore, I will be recording the audio separately and then overdubbing the video with the audio track. Does anyone know what kind of software might be good for this?

On a related note, I am a novice in all aspects of video production and shooting, although I reckon I will need to do something about lighting since I am planning to stick two videos together seamlessly, and that might be tricky with variable lighting in the room, so I may need to look at some (cheap) lighting solutions as well... again, if anyone has any tips then that would be great...

I use Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.0, which was $80 when I bought it. Of course, there are cheaper versions of Vegas Movie Studio that are less confusing and probably more suited to a novice skill level. Vegas 13 even includes an option to switch between Simple and Advanced interfaces so the interface will always match your level of experience.

I'm a pretty experienced video editor myself, so I might be able to give you some pointers to get you headed in the right direction.

 

[Team THRT Drift]

I don't know if this is still relevant but I personally love using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. There is a big learning curve but I feel the program is intuitive and has features that really ease editing.

For example, they have a tracking feature for instances where you want to blur/block an object in the video. I use it for license plates and/or faces but I'm sure it'll be helpful for you if you're bluring out something like company trademarks that may appear in the video. Instead of doing it frame by frame the program more or less does it for you. I don't want to hype it up too much becuase there is still a need for key frame editing but not as much.

It comes with many other features that ease editing and it has a good UI. Not messy, or cluttered, or confusing.

Anyway, that's just my two cents.


Program

One of the best beginner tutorials

 

[Samus]

The best absolutely free software to do this with would be AviSynth and x264. The basics of your avisnyth script would be:

h1=ffmpegsource2("firstvideo.m2ts").crop(0,0,-960,0)
h2=ffmpegsource2("secondvideo.m2ts").crop(960,0,0,0)
StackHorizontal(h1,h2)

That is assuming both videos are 1920x1080 and would give you the left side of the first video on the left and the right side of the second on the right.

Then you just feed that script into x264 for the encode. If you're not good with CLI then use something like simple x264 launcher. Just set your .avs file as the input.

Then you can mux that video output with your audio file using mkvtools or something similar.

Vegas or Premiere would probably be simpler but they're not free and very not free, respectively.