Editing Camcorder Footage

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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!

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

Cheers for any help.

 

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Heard good things about Pinnacle, what do you reckon?

 

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Try out Adobe Premier Elements, there should be a trial version available!

Got the trial version on the download now mate.

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

Thanks. Will try that.

 

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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?

 

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Your right. Forgot about the audio. Coverting now, will see what size I end up.

Thanks.

 

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Got it down to 150MB with the audio changed to 48kbs. Not so bad I guess.

 

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Cheers, will make note of those last settings.

Where can I get the xvid codec from?

Cheers.