I have been working on a couple of short animations using Poser. I am quite pleased with how they are going but have hit a problem. I have rendered the storyline in little chunks, mostly as it was easier to storyboard for that and also coz it stopped my processor going into meltdown. The result is a huge bunch of short animations (between 1 and 20 seconds each). So how do I string 'em together to make a full animations. Can anyone suggest software that would help me do this. It would be even better if it let me keep the existing mimic-created avi bits and put additional sounds over the top. I am just a hobbyist so do not have a lot of cash to spend on what is just a 'for fun' project. So free would be brilliant or cheap as possible! Any suggestions gratefully received.

I got a full free working copy of Edit Studio of a magazine disk. Look in you local news-agent at the computer section, especially the DVD magazines as well, and you will see many different free video editors. Most are pretty straight forward and somewhat basic, but they can string video clips together very easily.

If your using windows, I think you should already have "movie maker". I dont know anything about it though. And if your on a Mac, iMovie wold be the way to go, I think that came preinstalled on the Mac. I could be wrong though.

Attached Link: http://www.virtualdub.org/index

There's an update to movie maker available from Microsoft. It outputs in .wmv format which is well compressed. It does one huge drawback (at least that's what I've found) and that is rectangular! I don't have the exact dimensions but basically if your original files are square it'll turn them into a rectangle, with all the squashing that entails. Fortunately, there are free video editors out there, virtual dub is pretty good. Try a search on Google for others, they do exist...

Try www.versiontracker.com in the windows area. You should be able to find a shareware or even a freeware movie editor. If the AVI files that you have well run on QuickTime for windows, (free) you could use QuickTime Pro which goes for about $30.00.

Attached Link: http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net

Go here for a better version of VirtualDub with more formats

How embarrassing. Just after I posted this I remembered I had a copy of Power Director free from a recent mag cover disk - it does it fine! Now I just need to redo half the animations coz the timing sucks! Anyone know any good books on directing? Thanks very much for all the tips guys.