Recommendations for AI video tools

[zerocrossing]

I have some minimal video tools that I want to use for a music video. It doesn't have to be amazing, but I want to be able to take old commercials from the 1960s and 1970s, upscale them, and substitute my face for the people in the commercials. Every site I go to seems to want me to set up a subscription, which is fine, but I can't seem to figure out what I get for the money. It's all things like, "The PremiumBananosity subscription gets you full use of McFuber and Extrosolion..." GIbberish. A lot of it seems to be paying for "AI models" to put in videos, which I don't really care about at all. This is just to have a visual for a song I want to post. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

[Benedict]

Honestly, I foresee an increasing amount of the audience turning away from bands that use AI instead of something handmade. Hollywood has already started to reassess CGI usage and AI as it has turned audiences off. Personally, I would rather see a painted backdrop (even if done in Inkscape) over heartless CGI, probably driven by a 2-cent AI bot as one is Art, the other is slop.

So for what you want to do, it was already a done thing by the early 80s, easier now with most decent video packages offering Tracking features. I am pretty sure it is part of DaVinci Resolve. A little bit of learning BUT when you get your thing out there, it will be unique and feel very human. When many of your competitors* are still mucking about with ways to alienate potential audiences.


*Trailer Swift etc is never a competitor for Indie acts, seeing Indie audiences want the complete opposite. They want a connection on a deeper level that you can't do with avoidance of the real work. As an example, I just popped on this ASF vid and everything is raw and immediate. In no way do we feel like this is hiding from us in any way. Confronting perhaps, but not hiding.

[cryophonik]

I have some minimal video tools that I want to use for a music video. It doesn't have to be amazing, but I want to be able to take old commercials from the 1960s and 1970s, upscale them, and substitute my face for the people in the commercials.

You can do this with Davinci Resolve. There is a free and a paid version, both of which will do motion tracking. I use it often for music and modeling videos and it's pretty straightforward with lots of tutorials on youtube to get you going.

Will you be using a still image of your face, or a video? Either way, you'll need to do some sort of masking, but it's obviously simpler with a still image.

[zerocrossing]

I have some minimal video tools that I want to use for a music video. It doesn't have to be amazing, but I want to be able to take old commercials from the 1960s and 1970s, upscale them, and substitute my face for the people in the commercials.

You can do this with Davinci Resolve. There is a free and a paid version, both of which will do motion tracking. I use it often for music and modeling videos and it's pretty straightforward with lots of tutorials on youtube to get you going.

Will you be using a still image of your face, or a video? Either way, you'll need to do some sort of masking, but it's obviously simpler with a still image.

I'm seeing some stuff that's pretty impressive where you just drag and drop a photo of your face onto a character in the video and it creates a new video where you are that character. Shockingly good. I wanted to make some actors in an old McDonald's add all me... but I got tired of shopping for the right tool and I just used the old footage.

[zerocrossing]

Honestly, I foresee an increasing amount of the audience turning away from bands that use AI instead of something handmade. Hollywood has already started to reassess CGI usage and AI as it has turned audiences off. Personally, I would rather see a painted backdrop (even if done in Inkscape) over heartless CGI, probably driven by a 2-cent AI bot as one is Art, the other is slop.

So for what you want to do, it was already a done thing by the early 80s, easier now with most decent video packages offering Tracking features. I am pretty sure it is part of DaVinci Resolve. A little bit of learning BUT when you get your thing out there, it will be unique and feel very human. When many of your competitors* are still mucking about with ways to alienate potential audiences.


*Trailer Swift etc is never a competitor for Indie acts, seeing Indie audiences want the complete opposite. They want a connection on a deeper level that you can't do with avoidance of the real work. As an example, I just popped on this ASF vid and everything is raw and immediate. In no way do we feel like this is hiding from us in any way. Confronting perhaps, but not hiding.

Sure, that's fair for commercial products, but I'm just f'n around and want to put some visuals to a tune I wrote. My idea was to replace the people in McDonald's ads with me, maybe political figures, etc. I got overwhelmed looking for the right tool and I just used the og footage.



I did do a short test with Filmora and I got mixed results. If you have clean video without too much fast movement and frame blur (I didn't) it was shockingly good. But when there was blend wipes, you got some crazy sh!t. Disturbing... it actually would have worked in my context. The model clearly didn't know what to do and it just went crazy.

The biggest issue for me isn't really the ethics of it. If I wasn't going to use an AI tool, it just wouldn't happen at all, so it's not like there's some out of work CGI guy who's missing out on a payday from me. Basically, the world turned away from me long before AI, so good riddens. <gives finger to world>

[Benedict]

I wasn't worried so much about ppl out of work as you reducing potential interest. That isn't about commercialism as such (altho I worry about using footing belonging to and therefore (mis)advertising one of the most powerful corporations in this world.

While I get frustration with the world, it has rarely been particularly kind to me either as a musician, I don't see the sense in further alienating people who just might be interested if you weren't pushing them away. And despite what you seem to want to think, I think there could be a market for this.

As both of us said to you, with a bit of learning you could have used tracking. Would have been kooky as hell but that would have been genuinely good here.

[zerocrossing]

I wasn't worried so much about ppl out of work as you reducing potential interest. That isn't about commercialism as such (altho I worry about using footing belonging to and therefore (mis)advertising one of the most powerful corporations in this world.

While I get frustration with the world, it has rarely been particularly kind to me either as a musician, I don't see the sense in further alienating people who just might be interested if you weren't pushing them away. And despite what you seem to want to think, I think there could be a market for this.

As both of us said to you, with a bit of learning you could have used tracking. Would have been kooky as hell but that would have been genuinely good here.

Maybe. Right now my goal is to record and archive all the pop music I've written in my life, and not really more motion graphics. I did a lot of particle effects at my last gig for a guy who... was basically a jerk who couldn't understand that the game engine sucked and nothing we could do would make it look like a PC game. We were all laid off and I'm taking the time to record the stuff I never had the time to do in the past. I don't have any allusion that anyone might be interested in what I do. I'm inherently unlikable. Don't f up my supervillain origin story!

I did look at Resolve, though, and it actually does the same thing I was talking about. They have an AI Avatar generator built in now. https://www.descript.com/ai-avatars I'll revisit this later when my next track is done. I don't mind using found video in that ol' Negativeland style. Getting sued by Island Records was the best thing that happened to them.