Video editing software
- Thread starter Euro98ITR
- Start date
sabashuali
Ani Ma'amin
Check my signature for in depth video support.
What program are you using to transfer video to your PC?
There are a few free programs but all need a bit of learning when it comes to chopping and stuff...
Follow the link in my signature, you cannot go wrong.
Good luck!
What program are you using to transfer video to your PC?
There are a few free programs but all need a bit of learning when it comes to chopping and stuff...
Follow the link in my signature, you cannot go wrong.
Good luck!
These are transfered by USB cable from camera to pc.. These are only short clips that are about 30 secs long that are taken with my digi cam. The problem is that the camera's lowest resolution is 320x240 - 15fps and a 27sec clip is more than 8mb in size and is a bit huge to be attached with an email. I need something which can resize clips making them smaller in size.
Hi Sabashuali,
Ive looked at your help site and as a total newbie cant find what Im looking for:
I have a Hitachi DVD camcorder. it records onto DVD ram discs.
There is software that comes with it and I can upload the videos onto my laptop via USB. It says I can edit it but I cant...(easily).... It saves the videos in 2 files that cant be read or opened without the software.
I have a dog team that we have been filming in action. I want to cut out the dross and make a few clips of the decent action to host on our web site. Is there some software out there that I can do this with. Obvioulsy I dont want to spend hundreds of £s to do it, but there must be a reasonably priced piece of software that can recognise the camcorder when I plug it into the pc, recognise the video, allow me to edit it and then save it in a format that can be used by various video players. Or am I being too optermistic :-(
All help gratefully received.
John
Ive looked at your help site and as a total newbie cant find what Im looking for:
I have a Hitachi DVD camcorder. it records onto DVD ram discs.
There is software that comes with it and I can upload the videos onto my laptop via USB. It says I can edit it but I cant...(easily).... It saves the videos in 2 files that cant be read or opened without the software.
I have a dog team that we have been filming in action. I want to cut out the dross and make a few clips of the decent action to host on our web site. Is there some software out there that I can do this with. Obvioulsy I dont want to spend hundreds of £s to do it, but there must be a reasonably priced piece of software that can recognise the camcorder when I plug it into the pc, recognise the video, allow me to edit it and then save it in a format that can be used by various video players. Or am I being too optermistic :-(
All help gratefully received.
John
sabashuali
Ani Ma'amin
Sorry.. had a bit of a cleanup so not suscribed to the thread anymore.
I am really not much of an expert and my experienc is rather limited but I can tell you that video editing is a bit of a fickle afair. In order to get good results you need quite a bit more than just a webcam and a free peice of software. I will elaborate in a second.
Right - Euro:
Webcams are the Camera Obscura of the video cameras. A hole in a cardboard box. Lowering resolutions further to try and shrink the file size is not a good idea.
8MB for 30 seconds is really not a lot if you concider circa 15GB for about an hour and a half of uncompressed AVI file, captured from a digital camcorder.
What you need to do is encode the file you captured from, assuming, WMV or MOV to compressed AVI file. Unfortunatel, like with all things 'digital video', free sometimes means not very well developped (not going into this now....). Here is a list I found in VideoHelp.com - VideoHelp.com - Tools
If this is something you are going to do on a regular basis, check out some of the trialware. Perhaps it is worth spending a few bob..? What ever you chose to do, be prepared to invest some time for experimenting.
Smokey:
The latest shoot to disk camcorders are fab but they can shoot in two modes -
1. VR - not sure about the abreviation but the disk is voletile (I think it has to be the + format as well) which means you can "edit" the clips (called also titles) you shot. This means you can only remove clips or change their location (order of play). However, the disk, finalised or not can only be played on a VR compatible device (in your case, your software player on your PC), in other words - not many.... :dry:
2. V - not very flexible but the finalised disk can play on any DVD palyer which is not more than, lets say, 5-6 years old. Providing the player can read RW disks, of course.
If you want my advice, do not bother with trying to rip the video from the disk to your PC. All you are doing is going through more processes which will lower the quality of the clip further. Personaly I would "invest" (they are really not expensive) in a firewire card. These cards allow for transfer of video to your computer with little quality loss. This is possible because of the massive transfer rate. Most cards come with a DVI-Firewire cable and some sort of software like SonicDVD, to allow you to transfer the video to your computer.
You might find that some of these packages actualy allow for some editing as well. I think that MS MovieMaker can also be used for grabing video from digital camcorders.
However, if you wish to use the disk from the camera, make sure you use the V mode to shoot. This method, I think, uses the standard DVD file system so you should end up with a VIDEO_TS directory which will have the VOB and INF/IOF files. Any ripping software will easily grab the necessaries from the directory. You acn then convert the video to AVI files (Divx or Xvid - depending on your poison) again with many free or non-free tools.
Update: Sorry, I just re-read your post and saw you mentioned having a laptop and using USB. So, an expansion card is not really relevant... Are you sure this is USB? USB is really not a good platform to transfer video for the reason I have mentioned above. In any case, I think you should still be able to transfer/recored the (RAW) video from the camcorder to your PC, providing the capture software, whatever it might be, allows it. Try MS MovieMaker (if you have it, it comes with XP whether you like it or not :O ) to see if it recognises your camcorder.
OK, I ahve completely lost my train of thoughts here. Probably because I have never wrote so much in one go..... let me know how you get on or if I can help in anyway...
I am really not much of an expert and my experienc is rather limited but I can tell you that video editing is a bit of a fickle afair. In order to get good results you need quite a bit more than just a webcam and a free peice of software. I will elaborate in a second.
Right - Euro:
Webcams are the Camera Obscura of the video cameras. A hole in a cardboard box. Lowering resolutions further to try and shrink the file size is not a good idea.
8MB for 30 seconds is really not a lot if you concider circa 15GB for about an hour and a half of uncompressed AVI file, captured from a digital camcorder.
What you need to do is encode the file you captured from, assuming, WMV or MOV to compressed AVI file. Unfortunatel, like with all things 'digital video', free sometimes means not very well developped (not going into this now....). Here is a list I found in VideoHelp.com - VideoHelp.com - Tools
If this is something you are going to do on a regular basis, check out some of the trialware. Perhaps it is worth spending a few bob..? What ever you chose to do, be prepared to invest some time for experimenting.
Smokey:
The latest shoot to disk camcorders are fab but they can shoot in two modes -
1. VR - not sure about the abreviation but the disk is voletile (I think it has to be the + format as well) which means you can "edit" the clips (called also titles) you shot. This means you can only remove clips or change their location (order of play). However, the disk, finalised or not can only be played on a VR compatible device (in your case, your software player on your PC), in other words - not many.... :dry:
2. V - not very flexible but the finalised disk can play on any DVD palyer which is not more than, lets say, 5-6 years old. Providing the player can read RW disks, of course.
If you want my advice, do not bother with trying to rip the video from the disk to your PC. All you are doing is going through more processes which will lower the quality of the clip further. Personaly I would "invest" (they are really not expensive) in a firewire card. These cards allow for transfer of video to your computer with little quality loss. This is possible because of the massive transfer rate. Most cards come with a DVI-Firewire cable and some sort of software like SonicDVD, to allow you to transfer the video to your computer.
You might find that some of these packages actualy allow for some editing as well. I think that MS MovieMaker can also be used for grabing video from digital camcorders.
However, if you wish to use the disk from the camera, make sure you use the V mode to shoot. This method, I think, uses the standard DVD file system so you should end up with a VIDEO_TS directory which will have the VOB and INF/IOF files. Any ripping software will easily grab the necessaries from the directory. You acn then convert the video to AVI files (Divx or Xvid - depending on your poison) again with many free or non-free tools.
Update: Sorry, I just re-read your post and saw you mentioned having a laptop and using USB. So, an expansion card is not really relevant... Are you sure this is USB? USB is really not a good platform to transfer video for the reason I have mentioned above. In any case, I think you should still be able to transfer/recored the (RAW) video from the camcorder to your PC, providing the capture software, whatever it might be, allows it. Try MS MovieMaker (if you have it, it comes with XP whether you like it or not :O ) to see if it recognises your camcorder.
OK, I ahve completely lost my train of thoughts here. Probably because I have never wrote so much in one go..... let me know how you get on or if I can help in anyway...