Newbie music video -- feedback welcome!

The wife wanted to do a “lasso of truth” music video and I had no idea how to put it all together. Started learning Shotcut a week ago and we made this:

Yes, i get it that the video quality could be better / less grainier / better camerawork. My goal was to stitch it all together and set to a beat. Let me know what else i could do better.

Thanks ~ Shaun

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Very good.

The artistic match of video changes (especially the slo-mo around 0:22) to changes in the audio track is particularly notable.

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For someone with only one week of experience, that’s pretty good. Nice editing and I love the slow-mo part

Since you ask :slight_smile: If you ever do it again, maybe try to hide the distracting background stuff. Maybe hang dark sheets or something similar.

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Thank you @kagsundaram truly appreciate the kind words and support!

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Thank you @MusicalBox for your support and feedback! Point taken, lots to learn and improve :slight_smile: much appreciated!

There is a filter which can rescue grainy low-light footage. It is a bit advanced, and it will bring your computer to its knees, but sometimes it works miracles.

@kagsundaram yes, I tried a noise reduction filter but couldn’t be sure what it was doing in preview, so i just let it be. Must be the high compute requirement, now that you say, why i couldn’t really see what was going on. Thanks again!

If you use proxy while editing, you won’t see the effects in preview.

If you don’t use proxy during editing, and you do use Wavelet, you will think your computer died when you click “Play”.

Some noise reduction filters handle low-light better than others; some are tuned to fix old film or early camcorders.
Wavelet is especially for the effects of low light on the sensors and software of modern cameras.

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You can disable proxy and preview scaling to export a few frames (File menu - Export frame) in PNG format.
This may give you some guidance on how to proceed with the settings.
Proxy and scaling affects the result shown in the preview with these filters quite a lot.
Another option is to make a short clip where you can try out various alternatives. With this strategy you avoid rendering the whole video.

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Brilliant idea!
I’ve been clicking along frame by frame for maybe a half-dozen frames, to see if I like the settings.

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Since looking at moving or still frames is not the same, a combination of both techniques (export of a short clip + export of chosen frames) could be a strategy to achieve a workflow.
Additionally, Shotcut can export every single frame of a video as stills, so another option is to shorten a clip and export it with the “Stills” option in the export menu. The frames will be saved with an incremental name.

All these previous steps will allow a working strategy. They also allow you to see what advantages or disadvantages a filter setting has, in which conditions it works best and in which moments it is most effective.

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Yes.

I tend to be more critical than needed of still frames; when in motion, those tiny out-of-focus regions are unnoticable.


In a previous post, I described a method for critical testing of filter parameters for image quality.

Thus (critical comparison):

Differences exaggerated with Brightness to demonstrate the masking technique:

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Awesome! Thanks for the pro tips @ejmillan !! I will be surely doing that for my next project.

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Great, I will be checking that out too. Thanks again @kagsundaram!!

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