How To: Make Your Own YouTube Parody
Posted under: **UPDATE** April 29th 2010: Constantin Films, the copyright holder for the original movie, has asked to remove all Hitler parodies from YouTube. This is a move that makes no sense in my opinion, since the Hitler Parodies gave the movie more visibility than it ever had before.
For some months now I’ve been directly involved in a project that has 6 people writing in a blog and using the same twitter account in an attempt to bring some humor to the timeline, in Portuguese.
It gets a bit chaotic but its really fun (believe it or not). A few days ago I came up with the idea to prepare a video to make fun of an event that took place in Lisbon, Portugal.
I didn’t want to loose much time with it, just wanted to get it done and so I decided to use the (in)famous scene from the movie “Downfall” (Where Hitler goes in a rant against his generals and that has been used countless times). I thought it would be easy. After all I’m a geek. 
The truth is, what looked like a simple task, at first, turned out to be a technical challenge. After one hour, this was not about making the video any longer. This was a war, me against technology and I had to win!!! And I did.
The clip above is the result of almost 3h of work, most of it spent trying out several free applications that could get the job done. By the time I was finished I already knew that I wanted to make a post about it, so that you all can spend your time being creative and not dealing with the technicalities of making a video parody.
First of all you will need to install the following free applications:
1. YouTube Downloader: This little software allows you to download YouTube videos. Easy to use and pretty straight forward.
2. AnyVideo Converter: This application will allow you to convert the YouTube video into a format that will allow you to put the subtitles in it.
3. DivXLand Media Subtitler: This is the application that will allow you to synchronize your subtitles with the video clip.
4. Auto Gordian Knot: This application will allow you to put everything together: subtitles and video clip.
The installation process is pretty simple and all of these applications have been tested for malware so you are safe in installing them.
After everything is installed what do you need to do?
1. Download a clip from you tube, by using the YouTube Downloader. All you have to do is to copy and paste the URL from the clip and choose where you want to save it.
2. After you have the clip on your computer, open AnyVideo Converter. Import your downloaded video and convert it to “DVD Video NTSC (*.mpg)“. Click on “Convert” and wait until the video converts.
3. Now for the fun part. Open NotePad and the video clip. Watch it and come up with whatever subtitles you want. The best way to make this if you speak aloud the lines above the video to see if it works. DO NOT DO THIS ON A PUBLIC SPACE! When you are happy with it save your subtitles file as a *.txt file.
4. Open DivXLand Media Subtitler. Go to File and “Open text or subtitle” and choose the text file you just wrote. Then choose “Open Video…” and choose the converted video.
Choose “Press and Hold” (picture above) and click on Play on the video window. Now all you have to do is to click “Apply” button and hold it to insert your subtitles.
When you are done you can click on “Preview” to see the result. If you are not happy, choose the first line of your subtitles, click again on “Press and Hold” and do it again.
When you are happy with the result go to the File menu, choose “Save as…” and save your subtitles as “SRT“.To make it easier, name your file “XXXX_SRT.srt” so you which one is your SRT file.
All done? Let’s go to the next and last step!
5. Open Auto Gordian Know. Choose your video clip. The application will immediately create an output file.
Then click “CTRL+F8” on your keyboad: This will show up a new function on the application that will allow you to import your subtitles file. (The one with the “*.srt”)
At this point you can “Preview” the final output or you can just click on “Add Job” and then click “Start“. You will notice that your computer will start opening some applications by itself but worry not. Go and have a coffee. You deserve it. You just made your first YouTube Parody.
Well, in my case, my 2nd . Was this “How to” helpful? Are you going to give it a try? Please let me know in the comments!
Picture Credits: Pietro Izzo under a CC License
@FrankFerrer_ @tartofs O @fjfonseca escreveu um post sobre isso: http://bit.ly/dCi3rl
Thank you very much! Incredibly helpful, it takes all too long to work out things like this without knowing someone who has done it first.