Editing Camcorder Footage

Phaser

Phaser

Phaser

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Joined
17 Mar 2004
Posts
1,562
Hi all,

Just got a firewire cable yesterday so i've been taking the footage off my camcorder.

Only been using Windows Movie Maker 2 at the moment, not that impressed.

A 5 min video file encoded at 640x480 is about 60MB, and the quality isn't all that great either.

What does everyone reccomend? And what sort of file sizes should I be expecting relating to different resolutions etc? Ideally i'd like 2 files, 1 where I can watch in good quality/store on my PC, and a smaller one where I can upload to the net and let people download.

Heres my efforts with Movie Maker yesterday. Don't all download at once I don't have that much bandwidth! :p

http://www.dziremedia.co.uk/offlimitscrew/video/OLC_IN_SESSION_WWW.OFFLIMITSCREW.CO.UK_08.02.06.wmv

Cheers for any help.
 
Firstly if it's a PAL camcorder you should be capturing footage at 720 x 576 (if its 4:3 aspect). To capture maximum quality you should use a DV codec which roughly equates to about just over 1GB for 5mins.

You can compress you film afterwards using something like VirtualDubMod
 
philio16 said:
Try out Adobe Premier Elements, there should be a trial version available!
Click to expand...

Got the trial version on the download now mate.


Retorted said:
Firstly if it's a PAL camcorder you should be capturing footage at 720 x 576 (if its 4:3 aspect). To capture maximum quality you should use a DV codec which roughly equates to about just over 1GB for 5mins.

You can compress you film afterwards using something like VirtualDubMod
Click to expand...

Thanks. Will try that.
 
Right i'm playing around with VirtualDub now, however when it comes to saving/compressing theres no mpeg-4 option?

Best I can do is a 30 min audio/video avi file at 352 x 240, compressed with DIVX 6.1 which turns out at 350MB.

Is that about right? :confused:
 
Phaser said:
Is that about right? :confused:
Click to expand...
Nope. I'm gonna guess that you haven't compressed the audio? You need to go to streams > stream list. Right click the audio stream and select full processing mode. Then right click again and you are able to select compression, for which you'll want a suitable mp3 codec installed on your system.
 
I use Pinnacle 9 . Great program from start to finish .Will ,capture ,edit ,do all sorts of transitions and then write directly to DVD with good results .If you have the time and want to spend hours tweaking your videos good enough for a Hollywood blockbuster then dont use Pinnacle. I think most people watching wont know the difference or even care .As long as it's presented nicely with a bit background music , Pinnacle is a winner.
 
Virtual dub is a good program and it's free. Lets you capture the video and audio, encode to whatever codec and container you want, add filters, de-interlacing, and cropping all on the fly.

You should be capturing at 720x576 (16:9) if your using a pal camcorder. Encode with xvid at 1.5Mbps for about dvd quality, works out about 650mb an hour. Without the audio. Encode the audio at wma 128kbps or ogg 64kbps if your not using an avi container.

A 5 min video 720x576 with xvid @ 1.5mbps and wma @128kbps would be 58.2 Mb and would be great quality and is what I would suggest using for permanent storage.
 
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