Beginner Needs Info!

[mogwai]

Hello.
I'm new to this art, but it's clear that you lot REALLY know your shit. So is it okay if I ask a few questions? Warning: they're probably completely retarded - but bear in mind there was a time when you knew nothing too! Thanks in advance...

1. How the hell can I edit videos together for free? I know there's a way to hook up 2 video recorders to a TV and play one video, then record that stuff onto the other video. Can anyone tell me how exactly this is done?

2. What I want (as I'm sure most of you do too) is to have clips from movies etc. respond to music in a club. Problem is, to synch the visuals, I'd probably need a bank of them stored as mpeg or whatever and some fucking expensive software (not to mention hardware) - and I just can't afford that. Are there any free, or even really cheap, alternatives? I don't care how crap they are compared to expensive methods. Any freeware that can do the trick? I don't necessarily need hyper-smooth transitions/cuts and all that, just the cheapest methods available!

3. What kind of machine do I need to edit basic videos on my TV? I know you can get cheap video editors, even in places like Argos (!), but is one video recorder enough for that?

Thanks again
Mogwai

[Anyone]

Mogwai,

a good thing to do for starters is to go through the articles of vjcentral.com
and perhaps also audiovisualizers.com and find out for yourself more or less which specific avenue of VJing you want to explore...

I mean, an ok free beginner's app is winamp.com, but you shouldn't necessarily only consider free solutions: if you scale your projets from "free" up to "cheap" you'll notice that your selection of alternatives is much wider and better quality...:)

hope this helps, happy explorations !

NE1

[fluchtpunkt]

if you want to use video as your main source of footage there's basically two (relatively) simple solutions for the beginner:
- get a computer with an A/V master card (to record from video) & a large hd. get a cheap/free tool to mix the recorded files. if you've got a desktop, record the mix on video & play the video @ the venue; if you've got a laptop, play or live-mix the files @ the venue.
- get a (cheap?) hardware video-mixer & at least 2 vcr's (for record/play, play) (plus an additional one and/or a dvd-player), a tv for preview. pre-mix and live-mix the footage with the mixer.

the limitations of the first solution with a desktop are big (you can't mix live!!!) & with a laptop (you need one with a possibility to record, so the cheapest model won't do!) it gets quite expensive.
i'd recommend you the 'harware' solution(btw that's how i started). a mixer may seem expensive at first(and you can't email with it or play a computer-game), but in total it'll probably still be cheaper. hardware mixers may only know how to mix video, but most are are really good at/for it, because that's the only thing they're supposed to do (in contrast to pc's that are supposed to be able to do everything, and not always to good at it :) ). it's a much more robust setup and easier to extend.
also keep in mind, that if you're still vj'ing in 2 years from now you'll have (or if not need) a hardware-mixer anyway, but while your pc from today would by then have devaluated completely, your mixer from today would have hardly at all.

...

What kind of machine do I need to edit basic videos on my TV?

a video-mixer

[ristuuk]

video editing
you can also crash edit.
hook up your video to a second recorder and by using the counter and pause record , record the segments you want, pausing a few counts before the end of the segment.its not frame accurate by any means but loops can be produced as well
We used to do this for speed before doing a first assembly on a linear edit suite.
With a bit of practice your results can be quite good.
Next step buy some proper equipment!
But in the meantime ...