sending blender out

How do you take an animation in blender and upload it into a program like windows movie maker?

Hey, jsalit. Hope your project is coming along well. When you render an animation from blender, what output format have you selected? If you’ve rendered it to an AVI with (for example) and MJPEG codec, this output file should be able to be added directly to movie maker’s timeline (via a drag-n-drop? - not sure, not used WMM before.)

There’s a couple of things to check prior to rendering out any imagery (still or moving) in blender: first what the format will be and second where the files go and what they’re called. Both options are found in the Scene Buttons panel (f10) under the “output” tab and “format” tab respectively.

In the “output” tab, there’s a couple of fields that allow a directory to be entered. The first one is the more important one: it tells where output imagery is stored and allows you to specify a prefix for your file names.

In the “format” tab there are a bunch of options which control things like container format, codec/compression, framerate and resolution. For your purposes early on, AVI jpeg will suffice, but you may want to look at higher quality settings for your final output, depending on your target audience. If you need audio, you should select ffmpeg, then a sub-codec in the extra panels that appear. You will then need to add your scene to the VSE and turn on audio and the “Do Sequence” button. However, audio can be combined subsequently in WMM, I’d think.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck, and I expect to see your project posted in the Finished forum soon!

Cheers.

Okay thanks a lot man. I will render it with AVI and MJPEG codec. I am going to add the sound in windows movie maker because i know how to do it.

This project is a very small project that only took a couple hours and since i am not great at blender yet it is not so great. I also exposed myself to a lot more things that i have never done before.

In my future projects i am interested in using voodoo instead of movie maker.

I noticed you mentioned this in your other thread, but just to clarify: voodoo is not a video editor, its merely an app that “tracks” your live footage camera motion to ease compositing video with 3D output. Its likely you’ll not be able to use it instead of WMM.

What is a viable and free alternative for most any video editor is blender’s internal Sequence Editor (also called the sequencer or the VSE). I would use it a lot more save for the fact that it lacks most of the handy automated functionality of most consumer-level VEs, such as a lot of “batch” actions and drag-n-drop convenience. Many here will scoff at these simple enhancements, calling them extraneous fluff. But the fact is that they’re timesavers, both in learning their use and in the repetitive monotony they relieve. Because the VSE in blender lacks these, its adoption by average joe-blo users will be limited.

If you are looking for a more powerful alternative to WMM, I recommend Pinnacle Studio. You can try out their free (dumbed-down) version called VideoSpin to evaluate if you want. Other options include Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier Elements. They’re cheap n friendly.

I used the ffmpeg and it worked.