Comments on: Managing Digital Home Videos http://www.yorkspace.com/2005/07/25 Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:35:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 By: Thom http://www.yorkspace.com/2005/07/25#comment-9213 Thom Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:22:13 +0000 http://www.yorkspace.com/2005/07/25#comment-9213 I have also started to use video for collecting my child's gems. However, I have found that keeping the AVI on the hard drive is not only useless but expensive. Rarely do I go over the same ground again to edit them. My solution is to just leave them on a DV tape and store the tape with a note in a spreadsheet as to time, date, people in video, & description of event. I have found that mpeg edits are not any good and quickly dropped that idea. Compression of the DV AVI means loss of quality. Always better to stay at the source. I agree that your suggestion of Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus is ok but so is the basic video editor which comes with XP "Movie Maker" for basic use. For a professional polish adobe premiere pro really does a great job and is my program of choice. Thom I have also started to use video for collecting my child’s gems. However, I have found that keeping the AVI on the hard drive is not only useless but expensive. Rarely do I go over the same ground again to edit them. My solution is to just leave them on a DV tape and store the tape with a note in a spreadsheet as to time, date, people in video, & description of event.

I have found that mpeg edits are not any good and quickly dropped that idea. Compression of the DV AVI means loss of quality. Always better to stay at the source.

I agree that your suggestion of Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus is ok but so is the basic video editor which comes with XP “Movie Maker” for basic use. For a professional polish adobe premiere pro really does a great job and is my program of choice.

Thom

]]> By: dennis parrott http://www.yorkspace.com/2005/07/25#comment-204 dennis parrott Mon, 24 Apr 2006 23:41:36 +0000 http://www.yorkspace.com/2005/07/25#comment-204 One thing you should know is this: if you are planning to edit the video, DO NOT convert to MPEG and then edit. You may find that your videos end up with ugly audio-video synchronization issues. I call it the "cheap Japanese horror movie effect" -- remember those late night gems dubbed into English? The words spill out and then the mouths move or vice versa? Bone dog ugly. Editing AVI files loaded directly from the camera is a best practice. Get all of your clips loaded onto your timeline and then turn the final video into MPEG and then leave it be. If you decide to make changes, re-edit your AVI originals and then encode to MPEG one more time... Tedious? You bet. You will be happier with the end product though. If you MUST edit MPEG files, I highly recommend a product called VideoReDo. It is AWESOME and handles all manner of ugly MPEG files with ease. There are a host of other features that you'll like (eventually) so it is well worth the $50 it costs. Trust me, devices like TiVo can leave you with some virtually UNEDITABLE MPEG files -- two cuts to trim a commercial and you have Cheap Japanese Horror Movie!! There is also a useful PeachPit Press book "The Little Digital Video Book" that talks about tape/footage management options. Building an index of what is on your original tape(s) is important so you can retrieve the footage for projects. Storing ALL of your footage on your disk farm can be a very costly proposition. (Storing all of my final MPEGs on my 1.4TB - yes, terabytes - disk farm is already costly!!) Unfortunately, building the index well after the fact, like when you already have several dozen or hundreds tapes, ends up being a daunting task. One thing you should know is this: if you are planning to edit the video, DO NOT convert to MPEG and then edit. You may find that your videos end up with ugly audio-video synchronization issues. I call it the “cheap Japanese horror movie effect” — remember those late night gems dubbed into English? The words spill out and then the mouths move or vice versa? Bone dog ugly.

Editing AVI files loaded directly from the camera is a best practice. Get all of your clips loaded onto your timeline and then turn the final video into MPEG and then leave it be. If you decide to make changes, re-edit your AVI originals and then encode to MPEG one more time… Tedious? You bet. You will be happier with the end product though.

If you MUST edit MPEG files, I highly recommend a product called VideoReDo. It is AWESOME and handles all manner of ugly MPEG files with ease. There are a host of other features that you’ll like (eventually) so it is well worth the $50 it costs. Trust me, devices like TiVo can leave you with some virtually UNEDITABLE MPEG files — two cuts to trim a commercial and you have Cheap Japanese Horror Movie!!

There is also a useful PeachPit Press book “The Little Digital Video Book” that talks about tape/footage management options. Building an index of what is on your original tape(s) is important so you can retrieve the footage for projects. Storing ALL of your footage on your disk farm can be a very costly proposition. (Storing all of my final MPEGs on my 1.4TB - yes, terabytes - disk farm is already costly!!) Unfortunately, building the index well after the fact, like when you already have several dozen or hundreds tapes, ends up being a daunting task.

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