I don’t know what it would really be called. I did a search for “animation” software and found some apps that you can draw (by hand) frames and it will play the frames back in an animation. That is not what I am interested in though…
Say you are making a video for your song and you want to create a video with a horizon and a sun that slowly sets as it gets bigger and changes color. Or, a ship is gradually sailing away and getting smaller. Maybe some screensaver type stars turning in circles or zooming by. But I can’t draw. So, is there some sort of software package that has a collection of “clip art” or drawings that can be inserted into a scene and then animated, or have some effects happen, etc., for a couple hundred dollars or less? Maybe even some geometric shapes that can be animated to move, shrink, change color, etc.
I can remember seeing plenty of training presentations with slide shows and animations, etc., but I am thinking something more “artistic” that business like. I just think it would be fun, if it is not too expensive, to play around with creating some animated video for use with songs.
Certainly some or all of what you are looking for can be done in most video editors, even the less expensive ones. Its about the learning curve really, most of these NLE softwares can import a plethora of media types, you simply have to understand how to composite them, manipulate them in the time line. (Size, perspective, speed, etc.). In fact, if you look around, there are a few free editors and graphics apps that would get you started. There are lots of royalty free clip art sites online too.
Your post reminded me of way back in the 80’s Marcromind Director (see Adobe Director - Wikipedia) which was later Adobe Director… it was a cool way to put together those old CD based interactive tutorial discs.
blender is the most popular animation program, and has been used in more than a few professional films.
However, with great capabilities comes great complexity. I bought a book on it but am having trouble reading it since I bought it out of curiosity and not because I had a real project to work on.
blender.org is where you can download it - it’s freeware.
If you’re looking to do video creation using live video, I bought and have used CyberLink’s Power Director, and find it quite good for creating good quality videos.
Thanks for the info. I will check knto these. I have made a few with the free Windows Movie Maker that comes with Windows 8 and I am using a trial of Vegas Movie Studio now. I plan to try the Power Director trial next.
Blender is great but as others said, not easy to make something that looks good. It’s a modeling package with built in lighting and animation tools, but still primarily a modeling package which is not really what you’re looking for.
I was going to mention Blender, except that it has such a brutal learning curve. Movie Studio is really easy to learn, and might suit your needs. There are a ton of tutorials for most all of it on YT. Derek at https://www.moviestudiozen.com/ is a nice Aussie chap who has a forum as well as hundreds of videos.
What you’re describing would almost be more easily done in something like Flash or even jQuery with an HTML5 canvas. Photoshop can pull it off too with the tweening between frames. I used to pull stuff off like that in Adobe Premiere but it has a huge learning curve.
