Combining, watermarking and encoding movies

Raw movie clips from a digital camera, often identified by capital file names, ending with AVI, takes up a lot of disc space. Such movie clips might also need to be edited, combined and prepared for viewers, such as sharing with friends and communities, in terms of file size and watermarking.

This procedure will load one or more raw movie clips from a digital video camera, combine them into a single movie and write out a final encoded movie, that has been watermarked with a transparent logo. This procedure uses Avidemux and The GIMP, which is open source software.

Copy the raw movie clips to a local folder.

Start Avidemux and open the first movie clip. Cut off unrelevant sections using the time slider, the markers and the delete button on the keyboard. Store the movie clip under a name, that describes the scene. Open the next movie clip and repeat this.

Now, we are ready to combine the scenes. Open the first movie clip. Append the next movie clip and repeat this until the movie is complete. Store the complete movie under the final name of the movie and let the name indicate, that it is a raw copy, which means, that this movie has not yet been encoded.

Before we start encoding the final movie, we might want to prepare a logo, that can be placed in the movie. Such a logo can be created in The GIMP. Unfortunately, Avidemux does not know how to handle transparent images, but, by creating an image, that has the same dimensions as the movie and a white background, we can make a transparant appearance. Create the logo on the white background. Because we are using the same dimensions as the movie, the logo coordinates within the white background will be the the same logo coordinates within the movie. Store the logo in PNG format using default settings.

We are now ready to encode the final movie. For video encoding, select the MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid4). This is also known as the XviD format, which is the open source alternative to DivX. Notice, that it is spelled backwards. Find the video filters, the miscellaneous filters and the logo filter. Add it and set the alpha value to 15. Confirm the logo appearance using the preview. Close the filter. Using the drop down menu, switch to side by side view. Now, we see the raw movie to our left and the encoded movie to our right. If the encoded movie preview can be approved, then encode the final movie to a file name, that indicates, that the movie has been encoded to the Xvid format.

Test the final encoded movie in movie players, such as the ones, that the viewers are using.

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