camcorder to computer question

Bullitt73 · Criminal Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 58 City: Grand Rapids

I am trying to load my camcorder videos to my hard drive but it appears that I don't know what I am doing. The best result to date is 20 minutes of video burning up 4 gigs of space. Not quite what I was hoping for. My intent is to burn the videos onto DVD's eventually but I need to get it done without burning up so much memory. So what format should I be using to save the videos?

Thanks in advance.

BillJ · Posted: Jan 31, 2005 11:27 am Post subject:

Video straight from your camera consumes about 12GB per hour of video - exactly what you're getting. Once you have it on your computer you can compress it to a much smaller size. There are tons of different ways/programs to compress video: video editing programs like Ulead and Premiere, a free Windows Media compressor from Microsoft, Quicktime Pro.

It's really up to you which format you use. Some options are:

mpeg2 (this is the format that DVDs are in)
Windows Media
Quicktime
Real Video

The problem is that if you upload the video and compress it to save space then you are also reducing the quality. If you want all of the video to go on the DVD then you could compress it to high quality mpeg2 which could then be used to create the DVD later. There are a lot of DVD creation software packages available from companies like Adobe, Pinnacle, Ulead, etc. If you're going to edit the video to create a DVD then you're better off leaving it in the original AVI format until you're done editing it then create the DVD.

Hard drives have gotten really cheap - just buy a new 120Gb hard drive and you'll be set.

Bullitt73 · Criminal Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 58 City: Grand Rapids

Thank you, that makes sense. Now I just have to figure out how to allow files larger than 4Gb on my computer. That shouldn't be too difficult. I think.

BillJ · Posted: Jan 31, 2005 11:42 am Post subject:

If you're going to edit the video you're better off transferring it to the computer in small clips because they are easier to work with. Most of my clips are less than 2 mins in length and some (such as wakeboard tricks) are only a few seconds. It's a lot more work when you capture but it saves space and makes editing a lot easier.

brinks · Addict Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 566 City: Orlando

I would recomend an external firewire hard drive. You can get a 120GB external drive from frys for about $150. Then you would capture thru your editing program onto the external drive. This will speed up your computer and give you more storage space.

wakesnake · Newbie Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 37 City: Tamworth N.S.W

yeah i agree go the firewire i have been using it for a while now and its great... Razz

mtn_bik_chk · Criminal Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 53 City: Southeast MO

I check out Best Buy and Circuit City weekly just to stay up on 'deals'. I picked up a Western Digital 160 GB INternal HD for 30 bucks. Combined that with a 160 GB EXternal, and it helped immensely. I've been reading up on mpeg 4 format. All compression of my analog footage for streaming has turned out horrible. Just did it as a Windows media file on low qual at 1.22 min @ 1 MB. Next step up was medium and file size ended up being like 9 MB. Watched a video from an email, same length, with outstanding quality and the file size was only like 1.3MB What in the world am I doing wrong ??
Thanks

ryanprouty · Newbie Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 36 City: San Francisco

I'm apple.. so maybe just ignore me.. but i use quicktime, with mpeg 4, and it's near flawless - look at this http://www.notforsaledvd.com/Trailer2.html - this is only 3.6 megs