DV Help please!

Neil · 17-05-2004, 20:36

Ok, so I've got my nice Panasonic Digital camcorder with lots of footage on it that I want off of it!

I am currently using XP Movie Maker to import it as a file on my PCs HDD, & I was then planning to burn it to DVD(s) so I can play them on my XBOX-alternatively I can save them as a video file of some description & FTP them to my XBOX's HDD & watch using Media Player/Center.

So.....

I need all the advice I can get!

What format to import it as, what res etc etc, the more info I have the better.

Ta

N.

Indians · 17-05-2004, 21:06

I've played around a bit

I used the default Movie Maker 2 wizards, playback from HDD option (can't quite remember what it was called), saved as .wmv was reasonable quality for the filesizes.

I'm sure you'll have some fun doing it. I did !

Neil · 17-05-2004, 21:14

Cheers for that.

I'm currently trying to add some titles at the beginning, & all of a sudden WMM just closes.....

SMHarman · 17-05-2004, 21:17

MM2 does not do DVDs (but you know that).

What you need to do is output from MM2 in AVI format. The same format it came in as, then put this through another application to create the DVD.

My personal choice is TMGPenc for encoding into MP2 and a separate audio file, then TMPGauth to make the DVD menus and burn it.

Can't believe I'm telling a mod this...

Do a searc for TPMGenc. (though I realise searching on AVI, MPG or DVD is not possible!) You'll find a 21 odd threads, many recent that cover this ground. Anymore questions fire away.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/se...earchid=111871

H2H

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neil

Cheers for that.

I'm currently trying to add some titles at the beginning, & all of a sudden WMM just closes.....

RAM, HDD space, Temp file location full? You are using WMM2 right? WMM was not very good.

andygrif · 18-05-2004, 20:36

DV (i.e. FireWire) is the way forward first of all (assuming your DV Cam has DV out). This makes life a whole lot simpler, allows control over the cam etc.

WMM is a very good introduction to bsic video editing, very user friendly, good wipes and titles - but I'm sure that you will very soon want to get more adventurous in your productions, and this is where WMM will let you down. So it's worth now thinking about alternative packages. The current favourites are Pinnacle Studio and Videowave - both are the good next level up from WMM.

The big advantage of NOT using WMM is that these other packages will record to MPEG-2 which is the native format of DVD's. By keeping the format as DV to MPEG you will maintain the least number of transitions between formats - meaning better quality pictures - plus it will be quicker to stick the content to a DVD disc, as you won't have to re-render the video into a new format.

It's also worth having a look at Avid. There will be two sets of people here - those that ask what Avid is and those that scream about the cost. Well for the first - Avid is a defcto stanard in pro video editing, but have recently released a 'low-cost' edit solution for today's faster PCs.

This low-cost is still over a grand - but I did read somewhere that they were worried about Adobe becoming the stanard kit that students learned their trade on, so were planning to release a FREE version - alibiet highly stripped down. Find it here http://www.avid.com/freedv/ although I have to say I've not tried it (I have used the full Avid Edit suite at work however) - let me know how you get on.

Then the daddy of the edit - always Adobe Premier - and if you can afford it stick a copy of After Effects on too for some stunning (if not difficult) visual effects like blue screen stuff.

Enjoy!!!!

Richard M · 18-05-2004, 20:44

Use Adobe Premier.

WMM always crashes on me, it's lame.

Neil · 21-05-2004, 10:27

Nice one-thanks all.

I used WMM to create a nice 3.4 gig .avi file on my PC.

It looks & sounds good on my PC, but won't play on the XBOX.

Richard M · 21-05-2004, 10:39

The bitrate is probably too high.
Besides, I doubt if an XBox can handle a file of that size.

**Chris** · 21-05-2004, 10:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neil

Nice one-thanks all.

I used WMM to create a nice 3.4 gig .avi file on my PC.

It looks & sounds good on my PC, but won't play on the XBOX.

And so we get into the nitty gritty of frames-per-second, key frames, picture size and sound quality ...

I do my video stuff using iMovie/Quicktime so I can't tell you where your specific settings and options are to be found, but if you intend to play them on a PC or xbox just for fun and you're not looking to retain the original video quality, you could try:

12 frames/sec, 16 bit Mono sound, 640x480 image size. Leave the key frame alone, it's probably already set to 24. These settings will generate a file that is more like 250mb for 5 minutes in MOV format, with a data rate of approx. 750kb/sec. (I don't know exactly what the difference will be in other formats.) Should play without any bother on any reasonably modern machine.