Videos from the tracks

[Rainmak3r]

Hi all,

I don't have a new track to share yet (I have multiple things cooking!), but I recently started playing with FOSS video editors, so I created videos for almost all the tracks I've released so far:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxNtC ... ZPxFLacRoA

I'd love to hear what you think of them! While some are basic slideshows, in many I tried to use images and free stock videos to tell a story or convey a feeling that matched the tracks as I conceived them: even when just images are present I tried to play with basic animations (e.g., on saturation) to still "say" something. For the tracks that had vocals, I added on-video lyrics too. Most of the stock videos were found on sites like Videezy and Pexels, which really surprised me in terms of how much material they provide for free.

Coming to the technical part, most of the videos were edited with Openshot (which is the one I used for Call of the 80s too) as that's what I started with, but I'm sad to say I was not happy with it at all... don't get me wrong, it's a nice piece of software, and very simple to learn/use, but it's also EXTREMELY slow: the preview in particular was basically unusable, even in very simple images-based videos like "Mary", which sucks considering how important the preview functionality is. Apparently a lot of people have been complaining about its performance, looking at the GitHub repo, but it doesn't look the issues were ever solved: unfortunately I suffered from this too, even on the very good desktop machine I have here at my parents' home. Yestesday, though, I started experimenting a bit with Shotcut, another FOSS video editor, and after a bit of tutorial study, today I got some cool results out of it, and surprisingly excellent performance too! Out of all the tracks I've made a video of, "Scheherazade" and "Out of the Void" are the only ones I've done with Shotcut, and I think the different in quality is quite apparent: besides, despite being more complex than the others, they took way less time to work on. Next step: prepare a video for "Skjaldmaer" as well

I hope you'll enjoy them, looking forward to some feedback!

[lilith]

This (video and music) is great and also my favourite!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wfu9YX_IuQ

I especially like the part at 3:58 when the water turns black

[tavasti]

Nice videos! Maybe I should also consider using stock video footage instead of spending time to shoot all clips myself. Sometimes that video and photo shooting has switched from supporting side project to main project...

[Rainmak3r]

This (video and music) is great and also my favourite!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wfu9YX_IuQ

I especially like the part at 3:58 when the water turns black

Thanks for watching! Yep, "Out of the Void" is one of my favourite works too, and it's the very last video I worked on. When I decided the theme for the video, and found the "dark water" video on Videezy, I knew it had to go at that specific point in the track: I think it's a quite powerful image!

[Rainmak3r]

Nice videos! Maybe I should also consider using stock video footage instead of spending time to shoot all clips myself. Sometimes that video and photo shooting has switched from supporting side project to main project...

Thanks for watching them!

On stock videos vs. shooting them yourself, I guess it depends. If it's a hobby of yours, and something you like to do in your spare time, I think it makes a lot of sense to keep on shooting things yourself: after all, it's the only way to get something truly personal and original! Maybe a mix of the two? In my case, it's not something I've ever done myself, and stock videos proved to be an easy way to get something done quickly, and get something still a bit interesting as a result. Of course, unless you're willing to pay, you're limited in your choices, but often, just by searching and watching a lot of them, you can actually get inspired by what you see. I guess it's the old "make a virtue of necessity" adagio

[tavasti]

Of course, unless you're willing to pay, you're limited in your choices, but often, just by searching and watching a lot of them, you can actually get inspired by what you see.

What I have checked, looks like for free you can get pretty nice material. Sure it is limited what you get, but so it is with own shooting: I don't want to spend lot of money and time for traveling to particular looking place, or build suitable scene. And in many cases, having someone else shooting video of me doing something would provide much better material, but in most cases I don't have that other person.

[Rainmak3r]

Of course, unless you're willing to pay, you're limited in your choices, but often, just by searching and watching a lot of them, you can actually get inspired by what you see.

What I have checked, looks like for free you can get pretty nice material. Sure it is limited what you get, but so it is with own shooting: I don't want to spend lot of money and time for traveling to particular looking place, or build suitable scene. And in many cases, having someone else shooting video of me doing something would provide much better material, but in most cases I don't have that other person.

Very true! Even with my own camera, I doubt I would have had the opportunity of shooting someone's feet walking on dunes like at the beginning of Scheherazade I've found Videezy to be excellent as a source of loopable videos (that I'm afraid I've abused a bit), while Pexels has some really cool shots that seem quite professional to me.

[milo]

These are nice videos. They compliment the music well.

I have been struggling with how serious to get in video production. It seems that video can extend the reach of a song, because more people connect with video than with music. But video production is so time-intensive, and I really don't love it the way I love music production. I admire people like @Gps who will teach themselves Blender just to make a music video, but I really don't see myself doing that. Last month I really wanted to make a video for my disco song, but now I've lost the motivation to do it. But is it better to make a minimal slideshow-type video just to get it "out there" or to spend my time making more music? I haven't decided.

Maybe I could outsource making the videos to one of my kids ...

[Rainmak3r]

These are nice videos. They compliment the music well.

I have been struggling with how serious to get in video production. It seems that video can extend the reach of a song, because more people connect with video than with music. But video production is so time-intensive, and I really don't love it the way I love music production. I admire people like @Gps who will teach themselves Blender just to make a music video, but I really don't see myself doing that. Last month I really wanted to make a video for my disco song, but now I've lost the motivation to do it. But is it better to make a minimal slideshow-type video just to get it "out there" or to spend my time making more music? I haven't decided.

Maybe I could outsource making the videos to one of my kids ...

Thanks for watching!

You can experiment a bit with loopable videos: for the disco track you mentioned, for instance, they may be more interesting than a static image or slideshow, and they're low-effort enough (just repeat the same pattern) not to consume much time after all.

[lykwydchykyn]

Those came out nice. You're inspiring me to try a bit harder with my videos. I only make them because it seems like people won't listen to a song unless there's a video.

[tavasti]

I have been struggling with how serious to get in video production. It seems that video can extend the reach of a song, because more people connect with video than with music. But video production is so time-intensive, and I really don't love it the way I love music production. I admire people like @Gps who will teach themselves Blender just to make a music video, but I really don't see myself doing that. Last month I really wanted to make a video for my disco song, but now I've lost the motivation to do it. But is it better to make a minimal slideshow-type video just to get it "out there" or to spend my time making more music? I haven't decided.

These are questions to consider. Some time ago I ended up looking in music visualization programs, ended up coding some stuff to Lebiniou. Spent few months all my free time stuff related to that, instead of making music. Ok, now it has features (or at least my fork has, did not have energy to go thru all the hoops to get all of my code into official version) I need, so I can use it in my own quick, not release ready songs. Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99EWNyRTHQ

And something similar done with timelapse videos of sunsets and sunrise. Now I would have such videos, need just create suitable music. Video production can seriously damage your ability to make music. Careful where you step!

[Basslint]

I think they are very good, I've seen some popular electronic musicians with less impressive videos, while yours are at times touching.

You could try kdenlive instead of OpenShot, I hear is one of the most fully featured editors out there, even if from my experience it has a very steep learning curve.

[GMaq]

Hi!

@Rainmak3r

Sorry haven't had a lot of spare time to watch all of the videos, I liked Out of the Void so far though!

For any who may be interested here's a video comparing the various FOSS NLE's:
https://youtu.be/edQIda8pwxY

I 100% disagree with his assessment of Cinelerra-GG, It's the only NLE I use and it is very stable and has never held me back from doing what I wanted but there are a lot of good points about all the FOSS NLE's in this Video.

[Rainmak3r]

Those came out nice. You're inspiring me to try a bit harder with my videos. I only make them because it seems like people won't listen to a song unless there's a video.

Thanks! It's partly the reason why I started doing it too, even though it's mostly because I did the fun 80s video for "Call of the 80s" and found out super-amateurish video editing could be fun too

[Rainmak3r]

I think they are very good, I've seen some popular electronic musicians with less impressive videos, while yours are at times touching.

Thanks! I really appreciate the "touching" part, as I have indeed tried to tell a story in each of them with the limited means I had.

You could try kdenlive instead of OpenShot, I hear is one of the most fully featured editors out there, even if from my experience it has a very steep learning curve.

I pretty much abandoned Openshot for Shotcut, now, and I got a much nicer experience so I think I'll stick with it. I'm an XFCE user which is GTK-based, so kdenlive would force me to get a bunch of KDE dependencies I'd rather avoid. Unless there are reasons to try it anyway?