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Old October 10th 17, 09:21 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

How does my very first Windows-edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe

Thanks to suggestions in this newsgroup, I was able to edit my first MP4
video, which, in this case, was just a screen recording of five-year-old
Android 4.3 functionality to show the iOS users that even their newest
devices don't have similar capabilities.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi1.jpg

But the point here is just to ask you what you think of it, and to let you
know the fundamental techniques used so that you can do the same should you
wish to edit videos from Android to Windows over the LAN.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi2.jpg

Here's what I did to create that 3-minute video:
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi3.jpg

Android freewa
"FRITZ!App WLAN" (de.avm.android.wlanapp) version 1.2.1
"FTP Server (Free)" (be.ppareit.sw3iftp_free) version 2.14.1
"KingoROOT" (com.kingoapp.apk) version 4.2.5
"RecMe" (com.mobzapp.recme.free) version 2.3.3

Windows freewa
"FileZilla" FTP client freeware, version 3.28.0
"Shotcut" video editing freeware, version 17.09.04

Since only on Android 4.4+, did screen recording apparently arrive to the
unrooted masses, I used "RecMe" freeware on a KingoRoot rooted Android 4.3
phone and I used "FRITZ!AQpp WLAN" freeware to graph WiFi signal strength
over time and I used FTP Server Free to allow the Windows FileZilla client
to copy the file wirelessly over the LAN on WiFi.

NOTE: If you're on Android 4.4+, you have more options for screen recording
than I did on Android 4.3 where I used "RecMe" to record the screen.

Check RecMe settings to ensure the smallest decent quality video size:
Storage: /storage/emulated/0/recordings/record_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.{mp4,mkv}
File type: (MP4) or MKV
Audio source: Microphone
Encoding bitrate: 64 Kbit/s
Use hardware encoding: On
Resolution: 480p (480x854)
Encoding bitrate: 4096 Kbit/s
Max framerate: 30 fps
Auto rotate: off

I transferred the MP4 file over the WiFi LAN using FTP Server (Free) on
Android and FileZilla on Windows (SCP would have worked as well, but I've
file that the Windows File Explorer is flaky with FTP URUs).

On Windows 10, I opened the file in Shotcut freeware.
https://www.shotcut.org/download/

Shotcut takes getting used to if you've never edited video before, where a
golden rule is to copy the "video preview" to the "timeline" and to always
be aware of the current position of your "play head".

The fundamental approach is to create a series of delimited start-and-stop
points, where you add "filters" that do whatever you need done, which, in
my case, was a lot of obfuscated/redacted text that revealed private
information that Android recorded.

To cut out sections of video was as simple as locating the start and stop
points with your "play head", and then "ripple delete" the section.

To add an audio track was as simple as downloading an arbitrary MP3 file
from any of the license-free sites such as:
Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos
Music for Video http://music-for-video.com/
Vimeo Music Store http://vimeo.com/musicstore
YouTube Audio Library https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary
etc.

And then adding a blank "audio track" and putting the audio into that audio
track, fading in and out as desired using "filters".

Speaking of filters, basically filters are everything. They're like the
nails that the framers use to frame a house. The filters are what I used to
redact text. The filter is what I used to mute the original audio. The
filters are what I used to fade out the audio at the end. The filters are
almost everything.

Fundamentally, I created a "text filter" to block out (aka redact) private
information, where a drawback was that the redacted area isn't "smart".
It's static. That was a pain.

A lesson hard learned was that the only character that doesn't work for
blocking text is the most logical character you'd use, which is the space
character. If you set a filter with a background of blue and a font of blue
it will *look* like it's redacted while you preview the file *inside* of
Shotcut - but - when you export - the redactions will NOT show up - and
there will be no error. The solution, I belatedly learned, was to use any
character *other* than the most obvious character, where I used "xxxxx" and
that worked just fine.

Speaking of exporting, exporting the video was as simply as hitting the
export button. This puts together the whole set of clips in the timeline,
both audio and video. The number of options on the export are mind
boggling; but the defaults seem to work just fine by all accounts.

This is getting kind of long, so, that's a quick rendition of the software,
steps, and lessons learned.

What do you think of the video?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe
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