Video Editing (1 Viewer)

[Paul D G]

I don't know why you'd want to do it that way!

By having a single file containing a single tape's worth of footage allows me to load one file for the two months or so it covers, and it also allows me to easily locate something. And, it just seems so much more manageable to me.

I sit there and watch the tape in my editing program. When I come to something I want to use I mark it and drop it into the timeline, then I continue watching the tape. It seems to me it would be a pain to have to load a new AVI file every few minutes. Some things I've recorded last 20m, some just a minute or two. Some events I stop and start frequently -- like a birthday party. It sounds like having, say, seven seperate AVI's of one event is more of a hassle than it needs to be.

I know that my kid's birthday is on the Mar-Apr.avi file so I know exactly which file to load if I need to go back, or pick up where I left off. This seems easier than having to try to remember the birthday is on Mar-Apr06 thru 12.avi.

In addition I might need to edit several clips together to make an interesting piece of story. For example I taped an incident and stopped recording a three times because my son wasn't co-operating (he was more interested in seeing himself in the LCD screen than going thru the ritual I was trying to capture) and I actually had to have him do it twice. In the final movie I was able to recreate this event but I had to cobble it together from different "takes". What a pain it would have been if I had to load each AVI every time I wanted to take a look so I could determine how to best edit it together. And I went back and forth on this one.

Perhaps if I were working on some other project I'd see the benefits of doing it your way, but being able to zip thru one AVI works here. I have seven files I have to manage. If I let the capture program break it apart for me I'd probably have something closer to 150!

-paul

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Thanks for the explanation, Paul. It sounds like your method works for the type of projects you do. In my case, I'm usually editing a single event, like a vacation, to create an edited down video. In my case, having it already broken down by scene allows me to select those scenes I want to keep and which I want to discard for the final product.

 

[Mike Shellito]

Jason - too funy with your intro. I'm doing the exact same thing for a video of a fishing trip we take every year in Nantucket. I've got the Star Wars beginning, but I haven't figured out how to exactly mimic the scrolling text. I'm not quite there yet. I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio. I found it to be very intuitive to use, splicing video, music, background, overlays. I use AVI files, it then renders the entire thing as one AVI file, and it comes with a DVD builder as well, that allows you to set chapters, etc. It's the only one I've used, so I can't compare, but it does a lot for a fairly inexpensive price tag. I have some other home clips that are pretty good, when I get a chance I'll post a few. Good work!

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Is this AVI, MPEG? Do all the software packages do this conversion (if indeed required)? Thanks again.

Jeff

 

[Mike Shellito]

Jeff - here's a quick answer: a one hour video in AVI format is about 13 GB. A DVD can hold 4.7 GB. Compression to MPG is necessary if you want to put a 1 hour video on to a single DVD. If you're going to be doing editing, do it in the original AVI file for best quality before compressing to MPG.

Regarding the second question, I'm not too sure, as my program converts the avi to mpg and burns to DVD within the same program, but I believe this person is making 2 different DVDs (correct me if I'm wrong) - one with higher quality audio (Dolby Digital), but sacrificing video quality, and the other is higher quality video but standard quality audio. It's the tradeoff of the limitation of what you can fit on a DVD. Commercial DVDs fit more than an hour, with dual layer burning, etc.

I'm still fairly new at this as well, so to everyone reading this, if I'm wrong, please correct me!


Hope this help.

Mike

 

[Ken Chan]

Dolby Digital uses less space than uncompressed LPCM, so you can actually have better quality video, all else being equal. No "sacrifice" per se. I'm guessing he's going with the lower quality (lower bitrate) video to get more content on the disc.

DD is also compressed, so it's not higher quality than LPCM -- except when you consider that multichannel 5.1 requires DD or DTS, both of which are compressed. In that very common case, you might consider DD to be higher quality than "plain stereo".

 

[SethH]

As others have pretty much said, all DVD's (even commercial ones) are MPEG-2. It is a lossy compression algorith, but it is also necessary to fit the movie onto a disc. You can set different rates (quality) for the video. If I have room I usually run mine at 8000kbps CBR (Constant Bit Rate)

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Thanks a lot guys. I understand completely. I didn't think about the size of the video files being so large. I own a Sony DCR-TRV22 DV camera and want to put some of our tapes on DVD. I'm researching video capture cards now and plan to use the fire wire interface. I've been trying to decided if I want to buy editing software or just use one of the free packages available. I don't plan to get fancy at first and can always buy a better one later. This is great info. Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[teapot2001]

I've used Vegas. It does so much for so cheap! Premiere seemed to have a harder learning curve so I didn't get to see how good that is.

Jeff, I think you will want to avoid the free packages. There's so much you could do with Vegas or Premiere.

I made a "love story" video for my friend's wedding reception last year using Vegas and a Sony TRV17 miniDV camcorder. I'll see if I can show it to you guys. Anyone know where I can put up a 40 MB video file for free?

~T

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Thi, as with most things, I do a lot of thinking before I spend. I will definitely look into Vegas and Premier. I don't mind spending the money if it is something I will use. Does anyone have any capture card recommendations? I want to use firewire. Is this the type of converter I need-->http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1091099823364 .

I didn't think I needed a $200 device, but I thought I would ask.

 

[Ken Chan]

If you have a DV camera with a FireWire or iLink (same thing) connection, then all you need is a FireWire port. If your computer doesn't already have one, FireWire cards are like $20.

That $200 item also does analog video capture, which you don't need.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Thanks Ken. So I don't need a video capture card? All I need is video capture software and a firewire port? That is great. This is getting easier all the time.

 

[teapot2001]

You can use your DV camcorder to transfer analog video from a VCR or such to the computer. A plain firewire card is fine.

~T