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Editing mp4 - help!

4 replies

admylin · 10/03/2013 11:46

Dd (13) has been set some homework for music where she has to film a short advert and use music in the background (3 girls in a group). They have done all the work but it wasn't possible to edit the film.

I told her we could get a student of dh's to help as he's great at computer stuff but she's abit embarrassed and doesn't want to show him it.

It's a film of one of 3 girls trying to put on her make-up and finding that her mascara is no good, then dd and another girl enter the room and suggest a different mascara. Then they all try it and there are close ups of their eyes with mascara on and last shot is all 3 of them looking happy! They have to edit, string all the scenes together and then add music to the background and all without any teaching or help from school!

She's having trouble editing the video she has mp4 files from her Samsung phone and our PC uses Windows Movie Maker. Is there anyway she can convert the files as it's not recognising them when she tries to import them.

Alone the fact that they have to download some music for this film is a pain. When they have chosen which tune/song they want to put on it they have to buy it or download it somehow from youtube. She's never done that before (is it even legal?). I did offer my CD collection to pick a song from but Abba and Bee Gees isn't their cup of tea!

Can anyone help with how to edit for a start off?

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MrsPurple · 11/03/2013 01:25

Not sure if it helps but my dd's age 7 and 9 use imovie app without any help from me and it does all this really easy. Plus you can email or download to watch without the app.

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nannynick · 11/03/2013 22:39

MP4 is a container, inside which is the video but what codec has been used by the phone?

Try updating to latest version of WMM, as I have used Windows Live Movie Maker (the name Microsoft are now calling WMM) and it has opened an MP4 (with H.264 content) fine.

Maybe the phone is using a different codec, see if HandBrake will open it and convert it using H.264 codec. Then try opening that file.

Using copyrighted music is probably not legal, though if this is just an academic project which will never be shown to the public, then it's probably ok to use for educational purposes.

You could use FreePlayMusic.com to find Free tracks to download.

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nannynick · 11/03/2013 22:40

Windows Live Movie Maker will save as a WMV file. To convert that to MP4, if needed, then use HandBrake to read the WMV and convert to MP4 with H.264 codec.

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admylin · 12/03/2013 10:59

Thanks for trying to help. Somehow WMM wouldn't do anything with the mp4 files on my PC but ds(14) took it on a usb stick to his laptop that is abit more up to date than my old computer and downloaded a converter, brought it back to me as an MPG file and now we've manage dto edit it.
Just have to cope with putting the music on background now and we're done!

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