Movie files

[James4141]

I want to upgrade to a better camera and my basic one gives movies which can be handled very well with Microsoft Moviemaker 2. The files are low quality (320X240) which why I want a better camera. The problem is the Movie format in various specs is AVI ( motion jpeg) . Although Moviemaker says it takes AVI files I don't think Motion jpeg is acceptable. Many modern cameras seem to require Quicktime . What I'm trying to find out is whether Quicktime as a system is as user friendly and has the same features for "Movie production" as Moviemaker 2. I did read somewhere that there is a converter of some sort to make Quicktime files into a different format which will be suitable for Moviemaker. Can anybody explain the situation for me so that I don't buy the wrong camera.

Thanks,

James

[Steve K]

James4141 wrote:

What I'm trying to find out is whether Quicktime as a system is as user friendly and has the same features for "Movie production" as Moviemaker 2.

The short answer is Yes, Quicktime is very user freindly. In particular, the free Windows viewer allows viewing both Quicktime and Windows *.avi files. Last time I checked, Microsoft's Windows Media Player did not allow viewing Quicktime movies. I have not used Movie Maker 2, but I've read that it has a good feature list (especially for the price - free)

Video is a fairly long and complicated story, but for most Wndows users, Quicktime is a very good choice. For a number of reasons, the Quicktime format would be my choice ... virtually all Windows video editing programs, even the low end apps, happily import and export Quicktime.

(Just to mention it, DivX compressed *.avi format is very nice ... my new DVD player can handle DivX from CD-R's ... are your eyes glazing over? )

[Stevekin]

James4141 wrote:

Although Moviemaker says it takes AVI files I don't think Motion jpeg is acceptable.
Thanks,

James

I'm no expert, so hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but we all know jpeg to mean "picture" ( well actually it means : "joint photographic experts group", that's the joint group of photographic experts who devised the format we know as jpeg ). Anyway, jpeg means picture and motion means moving.....moving pictures !!

Which means, I think, that Moviemaker is just describing what they mean by AVI and not suggesting another format.

Regards,

Stevekin.

[James4141]

Thanks for the replies. I only used the term "Motion JPEG" because that is what appears on the specs. of many digital cameras (Minolta Z2 for example)

I also mentioned the Quicktime converter in case anybody has experience of using it to make files suitable for Moviemaker. Clearly formats are important because ,for example, I can't get the Ulead Video Studio to accept the video files from my simple camera but Moviemaker does.

Is Quicktime just a way of displaying "raw files" of does it have software to link clips together with transition effects etc and soundtracks like Moviemaker?

Thanks again,

James

[S1Artiste]

Stevekin wrote:

I'm no expert, so hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but we all know jpeg to mean "picture" ( well actually it means : "joint photographic experts group", that's the joint group of photographic experts who devised the format we know as jpeg ). Anyway, jpeg means picture and motion means moving.....moving pictures !!

Which means, I think, that Moviemaker is just describing what they mean by AVI and not suggesting another format.

AVI is simply the fileTYPEthat Windows uses for most video. The audio and video itself within that AVI file could be anything from uncompressed video to one of hundreds of different compression schemes or formats. A company could even make up (and often do) their own proprietary format. Of course, some formats like DV are very popular and quite standard. In order for Windows to be able to play back a particular AVI file, it has to have the driver (or CODEC) for that particular AVI file installed. Motion JPEG is a type of CODEC, though there are many different types of mJPEGs. Quicktime is just another format of video compression, though Apple's quicktime files carry the extension of .MOV in Windows, not AVI- for whatever reason.

[MrPogo]

Don't you have to pay for software to edit Quicktime format movies? It's been a long time since I needed to do it, but 5 years or so ago you had to buy the rather expensive Quicktime Studio off of Apple if you wanted to to anything with them.

[Stevekin]

S1Artiste wrote:

Stevekin wrote:

AVI is simply the fileTYPEthat Windows uses for most video. The audio and video itself within that AVI file could be anything from uncompressed video to one of hundreds of different compression schemes or formats. A company could even make up (and often do) their own proprietary format. Of course, some formats like DV are very popular and quite standard. In order for Windows to be able to play back a particular AVI file, it has to have the driver (or CODEC) for that particular AVI file installed. Motion JPEG is a type of CODEC, though there are many different types of mJPEGs. Quicktime is just another format of video compression, though Apple's quicktime files carry the extension of .MOV in Windows, not AVI- for whatever reason.

Thanks for your elaboration S1Artiste. Too much for me to hope it was as simple as I put it !

Stevekin.

[Steve K]

MrPogo wrote:

Don't you have to pay for software to edit Quicktime format movies? It's been a long time since I needed to do it, but 5 years or so ago you had to buy the rather expensive Quicktime Studio off of Apple if you wanted to to anything with them.

Go here for info on Quicktime:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

Click on the "Quicktime Pro" link for more on that program, $30 buys a lot of features, including movie editing. I use Adobe software, all of which handles Quicktime format (*.mov), and while I don't have Adobe Premiere Elements ($90 at Amazon), I'm sure it will handle this very common format.