Video Editing (1 Viewer)

[Jason Pancake]

I've always had a fascination with movie editing in general and in the last 8 months or so I finally built a capable PC, bought a camera, and acquired software that lets me edit my own videos for a semi-professional look. I thought I would start a thread related to the subject for people to share the videos that they have created and to share tips and tricks for getting it done.


This is a link to videos from our last cruise complete with music. They are VERY rough cuts with most of the intros being temporary until I can get a little better at it. I'd be interested to know what you think...

Videos

Software:
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premier Pro
Adobe Photoshop

Camera:
Sony Cybershot (DSC-W7)

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Nice job Jason ! Couple questions...

What video camera you using ? And... how much drive space did you eat up for all that vid ? Did you transfer via firewire, USB, etc ?

Can the Adobe burn the movies to DVD ?

Thanks - as you can tell, I'm interested in a similar package. I've got tapes from a Sony DCR-350 (8mm Digital) that I would love to get onto DVD, along with some analog 8mm.

What were the big advantages of going with your bundle (looks a bit pricey for my $$$) versus the basic Photoshop and Premier "Elements" package ?

Anyone have any comments on the best package to sharpen up the analog images before burning to DVD ?

Thanks again !

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Kirk,

I've been struggling with my old 8mm and Hi8mm analog camcorder video, trying to edit it down to something managable on DVD. Transferring the analog video to the PC has been the easy part -- my newer Sony MiniDV digital camcorder has an option for connecting an analog video source and passing the audio/video through its firewire output to the PC.

However, the difficulty has been the tedious editing task of sifting through hours of the resulting capture to get something watchable. I have 6 hours of videotape each for several trips we took -- Yellowstone, Hawaii and Alaska -- and trying to get that edited down to an hour or so video is pretty time consuming. I started with the Hawaii trip, and I just cannot get myself to finish that project.

The newer Sony MiniDV camcorder makes editing so much easier, since the capture is broken up into individual video files at every place you stop the camcorder. I was able to quickly edit content for a more recent Hawaii trip and create a very watchable DVD in a couple hours.

BTW, I've been using ULead VideoStudio and ULead DVD Movie Factory (version 7) for all the capture, editing and DVD authoring. I would be interested in any opinions of tools that make the editing task easier.

 

[Linda Thompson]

If your files are in (or can be converted into) any of its usable formats, try:

http://www.videoredo.com/

Best video editing software I've EVER used, bar none. Great rendering speed, an excellent preview function, and it even keeps a txt log of your cut points, in case you want to set your chapters at those points when you author. Highly configurable.

When I edit files I've PVR'd off TV, this software can even detect the points where the commercials begin and end, making the process semi-automated.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

LOL - my wife took HOURS of our baby girl just lying in her crib 12 yrs ago. I look forward to parsing through all that.

Can you give a high overview of the process ? Do you transfer the analog vid to the PC, then edit into smaller files, or do you stop/start the analog player to create the files ? I assume most of these packages allow you to add fades and other transition effects ?

Thanks again - look forward to getting on this project !

Edit - thanks for the link Linda - looks pretty cool. I'll try it with a couple sample downloads I have.

 

[Jason Pancake]

Kirk,
The Sony Cybershot DSC-W7 does 640x480 30fps with audio with the only limitation being the size of the memory stick. I can get about 25 minutes on a 1GB stick and I transfer it to a laptop via USB.

I convert all of the MPEG video files to one big AVI in Premiere Pro and then edit as I please. I have the ability to publish straight to DVD with Premiere Pro but I have not done it yet.

What were the big advantages of going with your bundle (looks a bit pricey for my $$$) versus the basic Photoshop and Premier "Elements" package ?

My brother upgraded his Adobe Suite and gave me the license and software from his older stuff so that helped a lot However, the Sony camera takes GREAT pictures AND really good video. The only thing I can't do is zoom when I'm taking video. I have a zoom lens that I can put on for longer shots but it's still a small limitation. Although, I don't think it really affects the quality of the videos.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I transfer the entire analog video to the PC first, capturing it in an AVI format file. The ULead software will break up the capture into 20 minute segments. From there I use the editing tools in ULead to break those 20 minute segments up into much smaller segments. Then I select the segments I want for the final DVD video, and add them, along with any scene transitions, to the timeline and then create a final video that can be burned to DVD.

Since you have analog format tapes, you'll need to have some device to capture that analog video to your PC. There are external boxes that you can purchase. In my case, our Sony MiniDV camcorder serves as this device, since it has composite and svideo inputs, along with stereo audio inputs. The camcorder then passes those signals on to the PC via its firewire output, where it is captured by the Ulead software.

A pure digital camcorder (MiniDV in my case) makes things so much simpler, since the video is automatically divided into segments upon capture wherever the "stop" button had been pressed while videotaping. That eliminates virtually all the segment editing from the project -- easily the longest, most tedious task.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

You got that right. I thought you were using a separate vid camera.

Scott - the Sony 350 I'm using will playback 8mm analog tapes through the digital out, so I'm all set (the reason I picked this particular model). But your comments on a pure digital camcorder for easy editing "out of the box" has me thinking I should upgrade.... My wife is gonna love this one !

Quick question on AVI vs MPEG - what are the pros/cons of the conversion ? A 30sec AVI captured from my analog tapes is ~130mb, what approx size will the equivalent MPEG at equivalent resolution ? I assume the image quality is equivalent as long as the resolution is the same ?

Thanks again for helping out a newb !

Edit - crap - I can get a 1080i Camcorder... I knew I should have stayed in my hole.

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...feature-HDRHC1

 

[SethH]

I've been using Premiere Elements to edit a video I shot of a friend's wedding. It has turned out great. I would highly recommend this program to anyone who knows computers pretty well. It is not overly user friendly, but is more powerful than some other programs in its price range. The premium for Premiere Pro is probably not worth it if it's just a hobby. Premiere Pro gives better support for multiple cameras and has more advanced features, but I can't imagine many home users needing more than Premiere Elements. Also, I prefer to encode to MPEG using TMPGEnc -- it may take a little longer, but it's very good quality with lots of options.

 

[SethH]

Not quite. MPEG2 is a lossy compression algorithm. It's a very good algorithm, but it is lossy nonetheless. The finished wedding video I just did was about 8.5GB as an AVI and about 2.5GB as an MPEG2 (including the .wav audio file).

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Ok Seth - you got me confused (an easy task).

For your wedding album, you first converted to MPEG using TMPGEnc, then edited the MPG using Adobe Premier Elements ? Was this a direct digital feed from your camcorder ?

Is this the best link for TMPGEnc ?

http://www.tmpg-inc.com/product/index.html#tmpgenc

The first MPG I downloaded off a direct video feed from the Sony was ~40mb for 90 secs, but the quality on my 17" LCD monitor was pretty nasty. Ok- I was using ArcServe VideoImpressions ver 1.7 which is worth what I paid for it (did it come with the PC or Camcorder ? I don't remember...)

Thanks again !

 

[SethH]

No. Most editing programs want AVI's to edit. You edit the AVI (which I got directly from the DV camcorder) and then export the edited movie as an AVI. Then use TMPGEnc to encode it to MPEG2 to burn to a DVD.

And yeah, that's the product I'm talking about in that link. You can download a fully usable 30-day trial. After that I think it costs about $80. If you're going to buy the Adobe product though, you ought to encode with that first and then encode with the free trial of TMPGEnc to see if it's worth the money for you.

 

[Paul D G]

I have just this week completed my 2004-2005 home movie DVD of my kids. I take all the home movies I shot for the year (usually around 6hrs) and edit them down to 30-45 movies.

I'm kinda tired so some bullet point comments:
- Best to edit in AVI. I have a DV camera. I hook it up via firewire and Ulead Media Studio captures the video from the camera. (I prefer the full tape as one file rather than having it break it down to seperate clips).

- 1 hr of AVI DV video equates about 12GB of hard disk space. So, 2004's video data takes up 77.9GB.

- After I'm done I make two DVD compliant files - one mpg at 6000kps, Dolby Digital 256; and one at 8000kps with LPCM audio. Reason is to presevre a best-as-possible version of the film for future use. I did this with my 2002-2003 video and now I have have a dual layer burner so I can use those videos to get a better looking DVD.

- Yes, it IS tedious going through all that video. I try to keep things interesting for the viewer and keep clips as short as possible. If it hits the minute mark it better need that much time to complete the incident it's showing. You don't need to show 20m of a birthday party. Establish, show something cute that happened, and move on. But sitting there LOOKING for those bits -- yeah, that can be grueling!

-paul

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Seth - In a previous post, you talked about Premier Elements superior editing ability. Are you editing with Premier, then converting to MPEG with TMPGEnc ?

Paul - I could twelve yrs of data, I better get an external drive array !

Thanks

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I am curious as to why you prefer this method, Paul? I've used both methods (long single file from my Hi8mm/8mm captures and separate clips from MiniDV), and much prefer to let the capture software automatically break things into small segments at the video recording stops.

 

[SethH]

Yep. TMPGEnc, at least the version I'm using, is strictly an encoder. So I've been using Premiere Elements to capture my video directly from my camcorder (via Firewire). I then edit in Premiere and select Export --> Movie and I export it as an AVI file. I then open TMPGEnc and set it to encode my AVI file to MPEG-2. Next, I've been using Roxio Media Center (which came with my burner) to actually burn the DVD.

 

[Jay Taylor]

Is there one decent program available that will do all of these functions well? One program to capture video, edit, encode to MPEG-2, then burn the DVD?

 

[SethH]

Adobe Premiere Elements will do it all and do a good job of it. I just prefer to use the TMPGEnc to encode.

 

[Ken Chan]

The subject came up last week (as it often does).

 

[Jason Pancake]

Ok, I'm working on my intro the cruise video. I think a lot of HTFers will get a kick out of it...

Intro