Spinning Tops Video

I have begun learning video-editing using Blender 3D —supplementing the 3D modeling that I have done using Blender. This is the second “ForeverSpin™ spinning-top video” I made as a learning exercise last year.

In addition to bronze and platinum ForeverSpin tops, this video uses three (3) iPhones (6, 12, and 14), and also a bike-cam. All of the cameras were on stationary-overhead arm-mounts. You can see these at the beginning of the movie on the “footage” taken by the bike-cam. I make brief appearances at the beginning and ending of the video —to spin the tops and to then hopefully mostly disappear —until the end, when I reappear to stop the cameras one by one.

In the Blender 3D app I learned:

1. To align three (3), and then four (4) video files using their audio track’s visual waveforms to synchronize the videos.
2. To switch between camera views.
3. To mask-out unwanted portions of a video, though I did no masking in the accompanying video.
4. To shift and scale video from its original format.
5. To render the resultant composite-videos and audio into a “proper” and as-small-as-needed streaming format, which is important for sharing a project such as this.

Finally, a couple of less “technical” lessons I learned were:

1. Don’t let the cameras take pictures of each other.
2. Stay out of the picture.

The accompanying music is “Arubian Nights,” one of the sketches/compositions from my 1998 production, “Girl Songs And Other Sketches.” I selected this particular piece because its length fit “just right.”

I hope that you enjoy.