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Help Making Rev Video's


fortflyer

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Just wondering if somone could point me in the direction of decent yet low cost or free software that can edit quicktime .mov files + add music that results in a pretty much small as possible file size while retaining quality.

I've been out of the geek bizz for sometime and all this new stuff seems to be mostly scams to get money or what have you.

Unfortunatly my camera only saves as .mov (quicktime format) :angry: so thats been limiting me quite a bit.

Thanks in advance, Jim

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Just wondering if somone could point me in the direction of decent yet low cost or free software that can edit quicktime .mov files + add music that results in a pretty much small as possible file size while retaining quality.

I've been out of the geek bizz for sometime and all this new stuff seems to be mostly scams to get money or what have you.

Unfortunatly my camera only saves as .mov (quicktime format) :angry: so thats been limiting me quite a bit.

Thanks in advance, Jim

Hi Jim,

I use Pinancle Studio Ultimate which costs around $100 if memory serves me right. The problem is, it does not accept quicktime files direct, so a 2nd piece of sofware is needed. For this I use an application called Total Video Converter. This is another $30 or so.

Pinnacle does everything you want and is quite reliable, feature rich and reasonably good quality.

I'm sure there are plenty of otehrs that will do the job, but these two apps do it for me!

Mac Heads will swear by Final Cut Pro (only available for Mac) which is something the pro's and a lot of broadcasters are using these days. May be overkill for what you want to do though, but a nice tool none the less!

I'll be really interested in what you go for in the end!

Cheers

Groz

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Oh just thought of something more:

Microsoft Windows Media Encoder is a free bit of software that lets you take most formats and turn then into a WM9 file. You can choose different audio to video, but won't let you do any mix downs, video transitions etc. The plus though is that it's free!

This is a 3rd app that I use with the other 2 - I render out of Studio as high quality as I can, then bit rot down using WM encoder - the results are much better...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...er/default.mspx

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I like using Hey!Watch for my video encoding needs when I don't have the tools on-hand to convert from one format to another. It's $1 USD for 10 credits, and you can convert a normal-sized video for just one credit. Having to upload and then download a big file though can be a pain.

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The reason I bought my first Mac was purely for video editing (coincided with birth of my daughter .. any excuse to buy more tech!) ..... On every Mac there is a free suit of software included which does video and dvd production (iMovie and iDVD) .... further up the scale there is a mid range product called FinalCut Express which has a more 'industry standard' timeline editing approach without some of the heavy weight features and applications of FinalCut Pro.....

Macs are just brilliant at giving you an easy route into producing semi-pro looking results

On PC's (which is my main business unfortunately!) ... I would agree with Groz's suggestions although I have used Adobe Premier (which isnt exactly Free). Some of the camera manufacturers (Sony) include free software and when a lot of the HD formats were introduced this was the only way to access the files... I haven't seen one of these programs I would recommend!

Whichever way you go it pays these days to have a good set of utilities for 'transcoding' your footage to whatever format you need, many of these are free (ffmpeg, videora etc) .. on the Mac I swear by VisualHub ....

Look forward to seeing the results and say good buy to your evenings!

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Unfortunatly my camera only saves as .mov (quicktime format) :angry: so thats been limiting me quite a bit.

Actually Jim I just realised ... the .mov format your camera is saving in is likely to be a mpeg2 format that's proprietary to that camera (is it a mini DVD, hard disk or SD card??) so you have to be even more careful that whatever you decide to use is compatible and you may still need to transcode the footage before you can edit it to de-mux the audio.

When a lot of the new HD camera's came out they all had used form of proprietary mpeg2 format which non of the standard editing software (mac or PC) supported, so all the advantage of quick 'ingest' from hard disc or mini-dvd was lost because you had to go through a torturous procedure to get the footage into a supported format ... a real pain .... there is a little better support these days but its by no means universal so be careful

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What I am using is Windows Movie Maker which comes with XP. I capture the video directly from the camera which is a 7 year old Sony. I think most cameras are compatible with the capture feature. Once it is captured you can then work with it in WMM. This seems to have enough capability without getting too fussy. It also allows the project to be rendered into many different format for different qualities and sizes.

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Hi Jim,

I use Pinancle Studio Ultimate which costs around $100 if memory serves me right. The problem is, it does not accept quicktime files direct, so a 2nd piece of sofware is needed. For this I use an application called Total Video Converter. This is another $30 or so.

Pinnacle does everything you want and is quite reliable, feature rich and reasonably good quality.

I'm sure there are plenty of otehrs that will do the job, but these two apps do it for me!

Mac Heads will swear by Final Cut Pro (only available for Mac) which is something the pro's and a lot of broadcasters are using these days. May be overkill for what you want to do though, but a nice tool none the less!

I'll be really interested in what you go for in the end!

Cheers

Groz

Final Cut pro is a VERY good program (But it has a huge manual, and I had to search through it for a class in 8th grade....), and I think there is actually a version of it for PC.

Personally, I get by just using Windows Movie Maker. It comes with any windows XP computer, and I think it is compatable with .mov files.

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Final Cut pro is a VERY good program (But it has a huge manual, and I had to search through it for a class in 8th grade....), and I think there is actually a version of it for PC.

Personally, I get by just using Windows Movie Maker. It comes with any windows XP computer, and I think it is compatable with .mov files.

Welcome back Spence....the beach in your new Avatar looks like a place I'd like to be !

FinalCut Pro isn't available for PC I'm afraid .. I use it because.... well its a little like me buying a shockwave as my second kite...I'm kind of stupid like that ... its been used for making plenty of Movies, TV series and stuff so has features I will never use but Ive never been very good at buying the cheapest option ;)

The first thing you learn about doing video is that however good your editing software is without decent footage youve got nothing thats the bit that I really struggle with :confused!:

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I wasn't sure if there was a version for PC or not. I may be thinking of a hacked version. I have some computer geek friends (Who are quite similar to myself) who know a lot about such things. Of course, I would not recommend searching for a hack, because they are commonly full of viruses.

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OK as an update I've tried a few different things and very few of them actually handle .mov files especially Windows Movie Maker.

I have used Movie Maker in the past and it seems to work pretty well, now if I could just find a flat out converter that would be great but like I've said most do not support quicktimes .mov format :kid_brooding:

I tried Total Video Converter on the trial basis it actually converts and edits nicely, not sure if its worth the $50 to activate it though.

Update: Well Thanks to Watty I have a great converter, made 1 vid so far but need to find better music to go with it.

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OK as an update I've tried a few different things and very few of them actually handle .mov files especially Windows Movie Maker.

I have used Movie Maker in the past and it seems to work pretty well, now if I could just find a flat out converter that would be great but like I've said most do not support quicktimes .mov format :kid_brooding:

I tried Total Video Converter on the trial basis it actually converts and edits nicely, not sure if its worth the $50 to activate it though.

Update: Well Thanks to Watty I have a great converter, made 1 vid so far but need to find better music to go with it.

Glad to hear you are making progress and I'm looking forward to seeing the results :)

Total Video Converter - I think it's worth every penny - some lovely Codecs in there, but then I'm a geek like that! Couldn't find anything else that came close....

Cheers

Groz

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