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Vide capture and re-sizing - help.

Started by Johnny, March 02, 2004, 08:55:00 PM

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Johnny

Hello,

I'm hoping someone here might be able to help. I very stupidly offered to help my girlfriend put together a short film to go before a presentation. I'm using Movie Maker 2 to put clips together to go with a soundtrack. The soundtrack is giving me no problems using SoundForge but I have a couple of questions about video.

1) When I play a clip in Media Player, it plays at a very crisp, nice small resolution. How can you make it play in that size in Movie Maker (with a big black background around it) when you're in full-screen mode? At the moment, it's just distorting the picture and spreading it across the screen.

2) What's a good program to split up video files? Sorry, I'm an audio-monkey, I use SoundForge loads but I've never ventured into video editing...

I feel stupid, dirty & small but if you can help it may increase the frequency of me getting my leg over and I can offer up a thread in GB about how my piss smells after a Saturday night on the piss if it's any compensation.
Thanks to anyone who can help me.
Hello as well, I promise to start posting - I've lurked for literally years but it never sort of seems right. It's like being a voyeur who suddenly pops his head round the curtain and asks if she fancies a bit more.

Purple Tentacle

I'm really sorry to sound like an absolute cunt, but here goes.....

Can you not "aquire" a copy of Adobe Premiere?


When it comes to video editing I find that free programmes such as Movie Maker and IMovie lack the basic options to make pretty much anything possible, tailored as they are for the casual granny spending her childrens' inheritance on a camcorder.

Again, sorry about not being much help, but why use MSPaint when you can use Photoshop?

Johnny

Thanks for the answer - I'm restricted to a 56k modem unfortunately so I can't "acquire" it - through Adobe's excellent download purchase service of course.
Fortunately, my girlfriend's company is looking for a sort of "minimilast" approach to this film so if can nail these two issues, I should get away with it.
Is there a long-winded approach to doing this - or anything I can nab off download.com. I'd hunt around myself but I really don't know what I'm looking for!
You don't sound like a cunt by the way ;-)

fanny splendid

Actually, I think if you have never done any video editing before, iMovie is an excellent introduction. BUT, if you have even learnt the very basics then, yes, it seems terribly under functional. You're problem PT is your a bit of an expert.*

And it's free.

Having said all that, however, I bet you're using a PC, so it's not much use to you, anyway.

*I am really interested in seeing your video, and now I have my PC working again, I'm trying to download it from soulseek.

Timmay

He mentions Movie Maker 2, and Media Player. I think he's using Windows.

Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Timmay"He mentions Movie Maker 2, and Media Player. I think he's using Windows.

Which is a shame, because I would have substituted clunky old Premiere for Final Cut Pro.

Is that available on the PC, or is it still Mac only?

TOCMFIC

I "acquired" Adobe over a 33.6 dialup a couple of years back, so quit whining:) If you can find just the install files on certain networks, you'll be sorted.

As for free software, VirtualDub can resize nicely I believe.

It;s funny, i do a LOT of video editing, it's one of my hobbies, and I've yet to find a better program for video editing than VirtualDub. (it's freeware.)  VirtualDubMod is even better. (It's taken the source for the former and improved it.)

You should really give it a look.

Timmay

Final Cut Pro: Still Mac only I believe. Although if it did come to the PC, if iTunes on the PC is anything to go by I'd give it a miss, even if it was "free".

I still swear by Vegas Video, as I'm sure you're all to well aware by now. :)

Johnny

Cheers for the advice.

I'll give that Virtual Dub a go tonight. I'll sort myself out with Adobe Premier over the next week or so as it seems to be the bollocks.

Thanks again.

Johnny

Sorry to bump a rather sorry looking thread ;-)

I've finally got hold of a copy of Premier Pro and I've just about got to grips with it. The only thing I'm trying to do in it is do one of those Picture In Picture thingies.

When I put footage in the bin, it plays fine in the little top left hand preview but when it's viewed in the Monitor, the visuals are a bit choppy. Is this a codec thing and is there one that anyone would recommend using?

I also get this choppiness when I build a preview of my Picture In Picture.

I should probably point out that it takes about 5 minutes to build 4 seconds of PIP footage so I am prepared for the answer that my computer is just too crap for the job.

Erm, any takers?

Neil

I haven't tried PIP, however I have experienced such choppiness when using transitions and the like.  I think this does happen due to slow puters and whatnot, but it shouldn't effect the final file.  I'd try rendering a short clip to see how it plays back in Windows Media Player or the like, and take it from there.  (I know you said you've built preview files, but I still find these can be subject to the choppiness, whereas the final video file should be fine.)

Johnny

Thanks for the reply Neil.

Last night I had gone back to basics and just tried inserting a four second single-image video file (no PIP shenanigans), building the preview and then exporting it. It still comes out jerky in Media Player.

But before even that, when it's just viewed in the Monitor, it's all over the place - but still plays fine in the little top left-hand corner preview box.

This is the bit that confuses me and makes me think it's a codec or setup problem. If it makes any difference, I'm using a clip from the British Pathe website - 176x144, 25.00 fps, 44100hz 16bit Stereo.

As you said, logically I'd have thought that the actual export should just be a question of time - if you've got a shit-hot computer it'll take 2 minutes, if you've got a crap one, it'll take 45 minutes. But I've been scratching my head because the end product should look the same...

If that makes anyone go "A-haaa.....", I'd really appreciate ideas for sorting this.

Cheers

Neil

OK, so you are recompressing a simple clip, so it sounds to me that it's a codec problem.  It could well be that the bitrate is too low or something like that, although I think that generally causes blockiness rather than dropped frames.  What codec type were you using, and what sort of settings?!

Jaffa The Cake

Quote from: "Johnny"1) When I play a clip in Media Player, it plays at a very crisp, nice small resolution. How can you make it play in that size in Movie Maker (with a big black background around it) when you're in full-screen mode? At the moment, it's just distorting the picture and spreading it across the screen.
Download Media Player Classic from http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
You can view video fullscreen and then resize it using the numberpad keys to the playback size you want.

Johnny

Okey dokey,

I''ve just tried using a different movie file and it works fine, even as PIP - baaaaah!

The Pathe clip settings are in my post further up.


The Premier settings I'm using for the Pathe work are (sorry for the text and no picture):


When starting a new project, I select Pal Video For Windows. Then...

Project Settings

Mode: Microsoft AVI
Compressor: Cinepak Codec by Radius
Frame Size: 768 x 576
Frame Rate: 25.00 fps
Depth: Millions
Quality: 100%
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Sample Rate: 44100hz
Format: 16 bit Stereo
Compressor: Uncompressed
Field Settings: Upper Field First

Movie File Settings

Mode: n/a
Compressor: n/a
Frame Size: 176 * 144
Frame Rate: 25.00 fps
Depth: <blank>
Quality: 100%
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Sample Rate: 44100hz
Format: 16 bit Stereo
Compressor: n/a
Field Settings: Unknown

Export Settings

IDENTICAL TO PROJECT SETTINGS


I was half-way to jumping in the air when I got the different movie to work.
But I don't think Zippy talking about using a Hover mower "in the fucking garden of eden" is really the corporate angle they're looking for ;-)

Santa's Boyfriend

Whilst we're on the subject, I have the capability at the moment to capture from video, but after about half an hour the sound goes out of synch.  Also the picture seems to come out very poor, even if the original video seemed quite good quality on the telly.  Any helps out there?

I doubt you'd be able to help me with synching without looking at my setup, but is there anything out there that can resynch the sound?  I know virtualdub can delay the sound, but that's not the problem - it starts out accurate, and then ends up a full 3 or 4 seconds out after an hour and a half or so.

blue jammer

Santa's, you can open an .avi file in soundforge, and it'll let you see the pictures on a timeline, you should then be able to edit the start point of the audio to re-sync it.

As I mentioned in the virtual dub thread, over in GB, I'd give DrDivx a go for encoding.

Rats

Whenever I install a sonic foundary product, I can't stream mp3's anymore so anything by them only stays on my computer for a day at the most. I've totally given up on them but does anyone else get that? Media player starts up when you click the link and then it just crashes.

blue jammer

Quote from: "Rats"Whenever I install a sonic foundary product, I can't stream mp3's anymore so anything by them only stays on my computer for a day at the most. I've totally given up on them but does anyone else get that? Media player starts up when you click the link and then it just crashes.

Sounds like it's taken over your file associations.

I've never had this happen with ANY sonic foundary product, only with ATI player and those fucking horrid horrid realplayer and quicktime, of which I won't have on my system at all.

Try right clicking on an mp3, select the option "open with" and at the bottom you'll see "choose program" if you click that, a screen will open and it'll let you associate whichever player you want to open the file.

I usually associate most audio files with winamp as that's the player I use.

Putting a tick in the box that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" will ensure it opens this time and every time from now on, jobsagoodun.

Rats

No, it's not the file assosiation malarki, that's the first thing I thought of but changing it back made no difference. Media player opens, tries to stream the file and just crashes.

blue jammer

Weird, which version of Media player? a lot of people upgraded to version 9 and didn't get on with it, I kept version 8, but use 6.4, the older one that is also in the same folder.

Rats

Yeah, I always use 6.4 I hate all the meaty pieces of shite that are supposed to be improvements.