Naw, the solution is one of those trick new 80 gig hard drives!
That's what I'm gonna do.

No rush. I just hate to see good parts go to waste.

Thanks

Vor

Ok - this girl doesn't care how it's done, she just wants her video!

And where are my editing rights anyway VOR??

Editing rights?
Uhhh, yeah, on the public release you have editing rights...

I didn't say anything, though, about the
Director's cut

hehe

Vor

Either way darlin' - Where's my copy??? I'd threaten to stay clothed until I got it but when I get a little alcohol in me I have a hard time keeping them on so that threat won't work!

Geeze, you guys save too much stuff. My old 8 gig hard drive is only half full. And my 7 gig here at work has 5.5 gigs free!

[ 09-04-2002, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: KingGlamis ]

Well capturing full frame video with no dropped frames and no compression takes A LOT of space. I don't have any raw files sitting around but IIRC the 45 second clip of my rail jumping took something like 60 meg of space.

So doing a full length video can take up a LOT of space quick.

Of course to save space you can compress the video but you do loose some quality - and it takes longer to process since you have to compress and decompress.

I've still got my old 4x CD burner that I got back when the $750 I paid for it was a good deal! But I haven't bought CD's in about 6 years. In college I would buy 200-500 CD's at a batch and then sell them to the people in my Multimedia class. I could sell them for more than twice what I paid and still be charging less than half what anyone else could get them for since I was dealing in such large quantities. I've still got a stack of over 100 blanks, and every other time I go to staples it seems they give me another free stack of 50.

Still haven't gotten my old e-mail or bookmarks back yet so I can post the links to the new editing software I've been wanting to try out My IDE cable isn't long enough to reach my new drive and my old drive at the same time So I have to go find a longer cable and while I'm at it I'll be swtiching over to an 80 conductor IDE cable so I can take FULL advantage of the speed of my new motherboard and drive

Hey Vor My buddies and I use Adobe Premier for our street bike videos. Works out great. As far as putting video files onto a CDR so not to use up valuable hard drive space. We have the last year's worth of footage on two Sony Vio's. I'm not sure of the specs but I know we added memory to one machine. We have found that alot of quality is lost when you store a video file onto a CDR. The best way that I have found to save HD space is to transfer saved files back onto the DV or HI8 tapes for storage and when you need them again go back and re-capture the files for each new project. E-mail me if you want to see a finished product of what Adobe will do.

Oh and A bit of good news, a distribution company called X-Factor video, picked up our street bike video this week. It will be in stores soon and International by the end of the year. I'll post a link to our site as soon as we get one up and running.

Adobe Preimier! Yeah, that's the one I have. I've never used it much because I don't have the MPG plug in or the plug in I have don't work or something. Premier kinda doesn't like my computer either... but, I'll be upgrading soon so that won't be much of a problem. Also, I've gotten a new program that converts AVI to MPG in a snap so I can edit in AVI (which is much easier then MPG) and then convert to MPG for final output. (AVI won't go through the MPG card to the TV)

I understand what you are saying about the digital video... but, I don't have digital video. I use an analog capture card. It does quite well but the saved video files are QUITE big. I try to save them at full capture/uncompressed quality so I can use them in other projects with as little loss as possible.
Jason, your 45seconds was 60megs? I have one video, the "waterfight" video from my tape, which is 5 or 6 minutes and it is too big for a CD!!! Of course, it is uncompressed and at full resolution. When I play it straight from the computer to the TV it looks like I'm watching it from the camera. Not to mention the high quality sound in it.

Putting a digital video file on CD would/should have no effect at all on quality. It's digital, after all. You loose your quality when you compress it small enough to fit.
It is generally a simple matter, though, to split a video file into two or more parts to fit on multiple CD's and then put them back together at playback time.

I HAVE taken some videos that I will probably never use again and sent them to a VCR for archiving. I would have to recapture them to use them again, though.

I would REALLY like to see what I could do with a TIVO !!!

Vor

I'm just ballparking on that 60meg figure - I may have actually been quite a bit more. I know it was enough data that only one of my four harddrives is fast enough to keep up with it without dropping frames.

One thing to remember when working with any digital media is it's best to work with uncompressed files until you're ready to publish. So if you're working with stills save them in your programs native format or uncompressed TIFF until you're done and then make a JPEG. If you keep opening and saving the same JPEG you can get some horrible artifacting since it is a lossy format.

Same thing with video - editing in MPG is a bad idea because you'll loose a lot of quality quickly. Even AVI's are normallly compressed. I've been using VirtualDub (http://virtualdub.org/) for capturing as uncompressed AVI and the files are HUGE. But the quality you can get working with them is incredible.

I can actually get better quality output than what I get straight off my camera since my cam has a slight color cast. In VirtualDub I can filter that out and output full-frame uncompressed video at full framerate.

As for CD - yes compression is the only reason you loose quality but I think TJ was talking about creating VCD's vs. just burning your raw video files to CD. With VCD you do loose quite a LOT of quality - but it's still kind of cool to be able to make a disc that will play in most DVD players. And since I can get CD's way cheaper than video tape to me that's a BIG bonus

Jason/VOR,
Where can I get some of this video editing software/freeware? Can it be used with quicktime format?

I use ULED Photo Impact for stills but don't have the one for video.

Thanks for any help!

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about VCDs. ::kicking self:: damn, I gotta get that CDR working again!

I know what you mean about the lossy format, Jason. I don't really have the problem of saving and re-saving, though.

My procedure is a two-saves procedure that only looses in the compression.

First, capture from tape/camera at maximum capable framerate/resolution. These captures tend to be 2 or 3 minute clips.

Next, place the clips with appropriate mark in/mark out marks into editor and add all the titling and any sound and any other special things like transistions.

And finally, "make movie" at highest capable frame rate and resolution.

from that finished "movie" I might make an internet version that would be further compressed but for the most part I am outputting to VHS or now, VCD so I want the big, uncompressed video.

Did I miss a step? or do you have suggestions?
I will be trying some new things this time so we'll see.

As for the programs, Jason is the one who recommended them to me. Virtual Dub is one of them. Let me check my favorites to see if I have a link or two...

http://www.vcdhelp.com/

Vor

And Oh, I don't really see a reason to mess with Quicktime. I hate that damn program.
Any program that FORCES me to use it to view images is OUT THE DOOR for me.
Quicktime has been very intrusive on several computers that I've worked on. I'd just as soon use Real Media for publishing, though, I understand that Jason has issues with them. I am going to try to compress small enough with MPG this time but I just don't think MPG streams like RM but, we'll see...

Vor

PS: Does anyone still use AVI?

That sounds like the workflow I would recomment VoR.

I'm not a big fan of quicktime either but it does have decent quality at least. My issues with Real are twofold:

1) Quality - it just plain sucks. Even at it's higher quality settings it gives me headaches and their audio always sounds like it's being played back from the bottom of a tin can. They keep claiming great leaps in quality - but I've yet to see any signs of it

2) The screwed me - I bought the full version of their player on-line through their website but they never delivered. And repeated calls and e-mails to their customer service department basically said "tough" even though I could produce a bank statement showing they charged my card. They still said it didn't matter - I didn't appear in their records for some reason and all the proof in the world didn't matter if I wasn't in their records

It is possible to stream MPEG's but it's a little tricky and not many people do it.

Personally I'll take a longer download over poor quality any day. But then again I'm picky as heck about visual things and quality. 4 years of professors who won't let you slip up on ANYTHING (I got a C on a project the prof and class both raved about in critique - his reasoning for the C. I had a fire extinguisher in the photo and he felt I should have turned it so the lable wasn't visible...even though I wanted it in there because a plain red extinguisher ruined my composition. The lable broke up what would have been a HUGE chunk of red.) will do that to you

Here's another place to start looking for video software:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Multimedia/Digit...Video/Software/

MainActor is another package that is kind of a Permier clone (though not quite as nice) that sells for quite a bit less. They have a free demo on their website (don't have a link handy) but it puts their watermark on all your video - of course VirtualDub has filter that does a pretty good job of removing those things

A really trick looking package I just heard about and am dying to try in Cinelara - but I'm pretty sure it's only Unix:
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Other general video links (some are Unix centric but may lead in the right place for other OS's):

http://www.the-labs.com/Video/
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtel...2289708,00.html

I was just catching up with some old co-workers and believe it or not found out that one of them is now the COO of Main Concept here in the US!

Hmmm, wonder if he'll hook me up with some free software