Trying to learn video production...

[Ken Ford]

I just picked up a simple camcorder (a Canon FS100) to shoot a few projects for a family member - he needs short vid clips to embed into PowerPoint presentations. (He bought me the camera, so I'm not complaining!)

After that's done I'd like to try producing short videos of railroad subjects to upload to YouTube.

I haven't done any video production since junior high. Can anyone suggest decent on-line resources (websites, forums, etc.)?

 

[bobwith2bees]

Ken:

last year I wanted to do the same thing. I have other hobbies other than photography and my goal was to produce some "home" videos to post on YouTube. It was my intention to try to use all PUBLIC DOMAIN software (ie: freeware) rather than commercial programs. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to purchase software but I looked at all the reviews and it seemed that none would do the job

I have a Panasonic SW20 (480p) which produces .MOD and .MOI files. I wanted the waterproof model to mount on my motorcycle. These files play on WMP10+ but will not import on Windows Movie Maker. I can give you some conversion tips but I need to know the file format of your FS100 before I can go into more detail.

You can check out my Youtube Channel . . .
http://www.youtube.com/user/bobskoot

bob

 

[Ken Ford]

Bob - funny, I was just researching the same issue, my FS100 also produces those files. Based on advice forund a PapaJohn.ord, I'm converting them to AVI files but I'm still having a problem with MM not recognising the Panasonic codec.

 

[russianRF]

Quicktime Pro (they make it for Windows, too). If that doesn't help, Premiere Elements. Though Quicktime Pro has an amazing array of file format abilities in its own right.

 

[bobwith2bees]

Ken:

I looked into all those programs but most will not recognize .MOD / .MOI files.

I only had to purchase this converter, for around $30.

http://www.aone-soft.com/quicktimeconverter.htm

and everything else can be done with freeware as it is only 480p

I suggest downloading the TRIAL VERSION to determine that it will do the .AVI conversion. No cost to you to try out. the only limitation is that it will only convert 50% of your footage. so make a 1 minute video and it will convert 30 sec of it. Once you get the resultant .AVI file then you can import into MM . I also do a lot of MPE4 conversions and I use VIRTUAL DUB (free at virtualdub.org )

VLC media player will also Play your "RAW" footage. so do a google and download this for FREE. It recognizes MOD viles. It has built in CODEC to play virtually any format. All of the Quicktime stuff will require you to purchase CODEC at extra cost to you, and even then you are not sure it will work.

There is another program FREE called AVIcodec. You can Google for it, or I can email it to you. This program will actually tell you which DivX version your video is and what audio codec it uses. Sometimes you need this when you get video from other sources and find that you get video but no sound. so this is just a tool to find out what codec you are missing.

I have learned a few things, that MPEG4 is not really MPEG4. everyone uses this term but there are no established standards except for H.264 which is propriety apple, and most others do not use this standard as they do not want to pay royalties to apple so you get a mixture of video/divX/audo codecs which makes things confusing.

There is another FREE program called DIVXinstaller. just google for it. this program will install all the DivX codex required to update all the versions to your computer. DivX3/4/5 and i believe DivX6 is on the horizon

once you have all these codecs installed you should have no problem doing your video project.

If you are still having problems, upload a sample RAW (MOD file) video to a hosting site such as Skydrive so I can take a look at a short video clip and I will see if I can convert it. I'm not sure whether JVC is using the same file structure as Panasonic.

Most .AVI files contain a header which tells the system things such as the frame rate, resolution etc. but on SD flash drive camcorders, this info is contained in the MOI file.

Not trying to confuse you, so give things a try and I will try to help

bob

 

[russianRF]

H.264 is most certainly NOT an Apple-only implementation; Apple doesn't own it, Apple didn't develop it. Apple WAS one of the very first companies to embrace it, and kudos to them for that, but still.

From the wikipedia entry:

H.264 is a standard for video compression, and is equivalent to MPEG-4 Part 10, or MPEG-4 AVC (for Advanced Video Coding). As of 2008[update], it is the latest block-oriented motion-compensation-based codec standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and it was the product of a partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003.

 

[russianRF]

More to the point of a solution, Wikipedia's entry on .MOD (video) files recommends:

Transport stream files can be converted into more common program stream files without recompressing the video itself. For example, FFmpeg, a freeware program, performs the conversion on Windows and Linux systems with the following command: ffmpeg -i myclip.TOD -acodec copy -vcodec copy myclip.mpg.

Edit for more Info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perian

This "Perian" is a freeware add-on for Quicktime Pro that will let you work with all the FFMpeg functions through Quicktime (FFMpeg is normally command line driven).

I'm an avid Windows user and I don't much recommend things just because they're from Apple. But still, Quicktime Pro is an excellent product, offering video editing abilities that normally cost at least twice as much. It sounds like Perian + Quicktime might be the way to go here.

Edit: looks like Perian is Mac only. If that's cool for you, great. If not, apparently there is also http://www.avs4you.com and http://www.mod-converter.org/

 

[Ken Ford]

OK, I figured it out - it was a conflict between MS Movie Maker and Canon's supplied editing software (ImageMixer 3 SE for SD). Once I turned off the offending files in MM all was well.

So, my simple newbie workflow is Read Card (with a reader) > Convert files to MPEG2 using SDCopy > Import into MS MM > Edit > Output as finished WMV files. Works for me.

Some first test vids: http://www.vimeo.com/user1286059/videos Nothing spectacular, just trying to learn the discipline.