How does your high school produce their season highlight videos?
I am interested in any companany or other source you may have used to edit and produce your wrestlng video. Looking for a resource for next year. Thanks.

I make them myself with Windows Moviemaker, stadard with Windows XP professional. I plug the vcr/dvd player into a convertor you can by at any tech store that converts Coaxial cables into a USB hub unit to download right into the computer. It takes quite a bit of time, and there are faster programs(they are costly), and the computer has to have alot of virtual memory.

Right now I am at regional wrestling and the film is 29 minues long and it has taken about 30 hours worth of time to get that far. My advice is to start at the start of the season, dont wait like I did!

Best of Luck,
Coach Brown

Surprisingly our high school is completely lacking in any type A/V editing equipment. I say surprisingly because our new high school was supposed to be a technological masterpiece. However, they do provide digital cameras for the sports programs to use so I downloaded the matches to my personal laptop using a FireWire and then edited the video using both MovieMaker and a WinDVD program. Both came standard on my laptop which I bought this past summer and used as a nice tax write-off this past week. Unless your school has readily available equipment or you have decent computer of your own, I am not sure where to go. Some schools have video yearbook clubs that follow a team each season. We don't but some do.

In the old days I used to fuse two VCRs together and connect a stereo to the VCR for some tunes. Bottom line, I just got frustated with what the school had available and went and bought a new computer. If your wife is like mine, she will not appreciate this expenditure, so you will have to press the necessity for a new computer that will have nothing to do with wrestling and then "mysteriously discover all of the neat programs on it that will really help your wrestling team" that you knew nothing about.

We ended up with a pretty good highlight DVD. One of these years we will actually have a good state tournamnet and then it will be really good.

If you want to see one, just e-mail me and I will arrange for you to get one for a small donation. I cannot charge you a fee per se since i did not seek permission to use the songs of Motley Crue, Metallica and such.

I have used various programs in the past but the best I am using right now is the Pinnacle ultimate series. While a little pricy, for the things it can do it is worth it. Most any Windows program will have a movie maker program in it. A number of little things needed in the process, length, background music, what the video features, and quick edits.

I think the thing to remember on the videos is that coaches, if using it for recruitment, are getting overloaded with them. It is important to make something that you want to look back on years later for the athlete, and will catch a coaches attention if for recruiting.

I would recommend getting something besides movie maker, or the built in feature for Windows, while that program does a fair job, the edit features and other "toys" on a quality program make that program worthwhile.

If you have a tons of photo (still camera shots) you can also make an OK "video" by using Photstory 3. It's a free download from MS ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...&DisplayLang=en ) and all you do is import all your photos in and select music and the program creates the "movie". It'll blend them into a PowerPoint type of show and it's great for tons of pictures.

I have my technology class produce it and I thought they were crazy when they imported 185 pictures, but it came out as a great video yearbook last year and the overall presentation was only 9:30 minutes.

Just another option for those that have taken still shots of wrestlers.

Sony has a good program that lets you edit video in pretty much any way you can imagine. I'm still finding out new tricks that I can use, and I use to think that I was a pretty knowledgable film editor. It is kind of expensive, but I use it to edit films for other people, so that helps defray some of the cost. And I wish Coach Brown had given me his advice earlier. It's a month and a half out of the season and I am only half done. Start early.

It's good to see that I am not the only computer nerd/wrestling coach. I use both pinnacle software and windows movie maker, but for the simplicity the windows movie maker can't be beat. I found it works best to have mini dv tape and you can plug your camera right into the computer. Saves time that way. In the past I have used the Imac Moviemaker. This has worked really well too.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I discovered I do have Windows Movie Maker on my computer and started playing with it last night. It does seem pretty simple. Now, I have many months to play with this and see if it will work for our team.

If you are really looking to produce a really good highlight video use Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 or 2.0. We are currently making the highlight video for UNK and it makes it so much easier! If you are needing a highlight video done let us know. We are doing some others for teams around here.

While all are good suggestions, I think Larry is "on the mark". I design curricula and multimedia products. I generally work with teams of specialized professionals.

Every video professional I have ever worked with, for the last 10 years, prefered Adobe Premiere when working with raw video. It is also simple enough that I picked up the basics in a few hours. PREMIERE is not cheap, but worth every penny.

As well as the others suggested, you might also look into Adobe ELEMENT. It offers a scaled-suite version of Adobe's media tools.

While there are better programs out there, Windows Movie Make is one of the cheapest and user friendly programs. Here is one of the first movies I made...a fun wrestling / spoff for my boys. While I don't think the vid will win an Oscar...it was easy to make. Flynn Brothers -vs- Skakira

Here is a little more serious one I made as a little history of my oldest' senior year in high school. Good action and shows some of the capabilities available on Movie Maker.

Sean Senior Year

Mike Flynn

That first video was really good until those wrestlers kept appearing...

I ran into a problem last year with Movie Maker when my labtop did not have enough virtual memory to burn a DVD. This year I have been hooking up my DVD/VCR combo player to a Pinnacle hub but use Movie Maker program to make the film. I know for a fact that Clay Center has an awesome highlight film made by one of their wrestlers, Jimeson I think. But Clay has some technology in their building to use I believe.

Coach DeWitt I would think being the KWCA Academic guy you would be one who knew all the cool and slick technology and it seems you are! I wonder if VanDerlinden uses all that technology he was so good at running their in Burlingtion to make a highlight film.

I remember making a VCR Highlight film using a videocamera on a tripod recording the TV while a tapedeck played through the TV. Man that sucked!

Best of luck to all, I am finally at State in ours, it has only taken about 30 hours to do, but I do enjoy it for some reason. Still no music or pics in it yet, it must be done by our end of the year BBQ on Cinco de Mayo!

Coach Brown

In my opinion the best program to use for a highlight video is imovie for apple computers. That is the program we use at Clay Center. It is very user friendly, if you have an apple computer. We actually have a class in school that is dedicated to sports highlight videos. The coaches do not have to do anything. We send two cameras to every event. Our wrestlerettes film the matches. I worked on it all season and had it completed two weeks after the season. We watch it on a big screen at our end of the season supper. The video itself is 45 minutes long. We have had a wrestling highlight video for around 8 years.

Coach Brown,

I have had trouble burning DVD's using Sony DVD maker on my Lap top. Got warnings such as not enought space / not enough memory. Was not sure if that was related to movie maker, the size of the video, or sony dvd maker?

Mike

To all,
Ok so I have one hell of a problem now, cant get the video off the computer because it will not turn it into a wmv from the project part in Movie Maker. The file is 4.9MB and 40 minutes long, but I get a warning sign that says "There is a file missing" I have rebuilt the entire project twice now, and it still doesnt work.

I need some help here, does anyone have any ideas about how to fix his problem? I would greatly appreciate any and all help! And I have tried numerous computers and lap tops.

Coach Brown

Coach Brown -

I wish that I could help you more, but I don't do a lot with Movie Maker. I use Adobe Premiere on a Pinnacle Studio System. I have been using Premiere for the past 15 years to make an end of the season video.

Here are a couple of User Forums Dedicated to Movie Maker. Perhaps you can post your problem on these forums and get a quick response from someone who has had the same problem:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/conversationlist.aspx?groupid=2203

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17844

http://search.techrepublic.com.com/search/Windows+Movie+Maker.html

Good Luck getting your project done!
Doug Vander Linden
Burlington Wrestling