Video making questions

[vrailaine]

• What's a good piece of webcam video recording software? the stuff I've got saves 10min videos as over a gig large at the lowest setting(which are terrible).
• What's a good piece of video editing software?
• Is there any point buying a digital camcorder instead of a digital camera any more?

Thanks

[Robot DeNiro]

PC or Mac?

I know nothing about webcams, but I edit with Sony Vegas on a PC.  I think it's relatively straight forward, but no one else seems to use it, so what do I know?

The low quality of your webcam files might be more to do with the webcam than whatever software you're using. 

[vrailaine]

PC sorry

[Robot DeNiro]

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think broadcast quality video can come in between 1 and 2 gig per ten minutes, so the quality you're getting at the moment should be good.  What program are you using at the moment?  What format are the files you're saving?

Speaking as someone who knows nothing about cameras, and very little about video files that aren't nicked off torrent sites, I still reckon your webcam is the problem.

[Sanguine Penguin]

the stuff I've got saves 10min videos as over a gig large at the lowest setting(which are terrible)

Sounds like you need a better webcam, better editing software and a better codec.
A top quality 10 minute clip using an avi codec such as DivX or XviD should only be around 70-100Mb and about double that with an x264 (mkv) codec.

[Robot DeNiro]

You might find you can change the codec that your current software is using.  At a guess you might be using some sort of DV codec at the moment.  As Sanguine says, XviD or DivX would give much smaller files. 

(With video files, file extensions like .avi or .mov are just 'containers' - there isn't a standard .avi or .mov.  Each can use a variety of codecs, which is why different .avi files are different sizes, quality and why some won't play on all machines.)