Putting faces on other faces in a video.

[palmertech]

I want to take a video with people sword fighting, and put another face one one of the people. The results do not need to be professional looking at all, in fact, looking absolutely terrible is okay. Will I need to go frame by frame through the video to do this? If so, oh well, but I wanted to know how you master video editors would do it.

[thewise1]

What I used to do was make two copies of the video then make an audio version with one of them then convert the other one to gimp. Then I used a gimp editor to export all the frames to a folder, then I could edit each frame in something as simple as paint.

Then re-animate the gimp with the newly edited frames, then convert it back to avi then put the audio back onto it.

It was a complicated process with many variables, like the audio being out of sync. But it was the only way I knew how to edit video frame by frame without expensive software.

[bicostp]

I'm pretty sure you can import and export the video to and from images using VirtualDub. Just remember the process can be very tedious, because there's 30 frames per second of most video. 15 is perfectly watchable, and anything under 10 will look really choppy. I suggest Paint.NET instead of GiMP simply because it has a much better user interface, and it's actually a little faster on Windows.

Other than that, you could use the trial versions of Adobe Premiere or After Effects.

[palmertech]

This sounds extremely not fun.

[XCVG]

I wouuld get a multilayer editor like Premiere or Vegas. Then hammer in the face (cut out) as a picture in a video stream ABOVE the main stream. Then use keyframes to move it around. Simpler than the above but still EXTREMELY tedious.