[Recovered Thread: 89373]

[sgspirit]

aijuswannasing wrote:

Damn its been awhile.... lol

I stopped tinkering around with the movies since that last post.. lol but my camera's still going strong even after some bad experiences (plugged in 20 volts by accident. lol)


Anyways, Sg, have you figured out anything else about getting these movies to play properly? For that matter... has ANYONE figured it out yet?

With two other solutions shaping up, I stopped chasing that line of attack. The remaining problem was the huge amount of processing time the final conversion was taking.

One way out was the purchase of a DVD/VCR combo deck. Cyberlink PowerDirector is my favourite video editing software, but the version bundled with whatever camera it came with, has some features disabled. One of those features is the ability to burn a movie directly to a DVD when you've finished editing. So I have to create .avi files first. I use 2-pass rendering, which takes about twice as long to process as the movie is long.

Then I use NTI DVD burning software to put the avi movies on DVD discs. Then I use the combo deck to copy the movies from DVD to VHS tape. It's convoluted, but it works, and I end up with copies of the movies in all three formats.

Around the same time the Samsung Digimax i6 camera came along. It comes with Digimax Converter software that's supposed to make a wide range of digital video play on the i6, which is promoted as a PMP camera. Well, the conversion software works fine, and takes about as long to process a movie as the length of the movie. I can then copy the movie to a memory card, pop it in the i6, and tape directly from the i6 to VHS tape.

I've tried to determine which of these paths retains the most quality, and basically I can't tell. So I'm going the DVD route just because I end up with backup copies of the movies.

So far I've churned out about 45 movies, ranging in length from about 5 to 40 minutes. It doesn't matter which of the 6 cameras the original footage came from. I'm even going back and transforming years-old images I took with my first hybrid, the Aiptek DV4500, into movies. This is aided by the ability to trim video clips, fine-tune the brightness etc. So they end up looking better than the originals.

My copy of PowerDirector either needs reinstalling, or is buggy, since it hangs regularly. I've learned to frequently save my editing work. I like PowerDirector enough that I'm going to shell out $$ for the full-featured commercial version 5. That will allow me to go directly from editing to burnig a DVD, bypassing the steps of producing an avi file.

Bottom line is that while I can get the movies to replay on the 920, it's not worth the trouble and I have easier alternatives. It sounds like the MPVR was the only hybrid to fully solve this problem, but it has the audio synch issue.

Learning to edit has been interesting. I've pretty well figured it out myself, and when I read up on how real film editors work, it seems I'm doing the same things. Each movie I do is better than the last, so there's a big difference between the early ones and what I'm doing now.

My main wishes now are higher visual quality on the raw footage, and a library of instrumental background music. I've also continued to experiment with shooting increasingly interesting images. The i6 has been a major step forward in that area, with the fast startup time, optical zoom, autofocus and super macro capabilty. It can take 6Mp stills at 1cm! By blowing up portions of stills taken with the super macro, I can include images in the movies that look like they were taken with a microscope.

On the first editing pass, I just copy all the stills and clips on a given subject straight onto the timeline. Then I add titles, insert transitions, delete bad or redundant footage and stills, put the images in the best order, correct brightness and color problems, adjust the duration for still shots, and split/trim video clips. On the second pass, I insert background music, adjust volume levels of the videos and background, and check for correct timing of the titles. I've learned to include blacked-out stills when I want to fade to or from a blank screen.

Most of my "movies" are about family outdoor backcountry recreation or travel, and I end up with about 5 minutes of movie running time per day of the actual trip. This keeps it interesting while covering most of what happened. I know the jokes about abysmal home movies, but my end result is fun to watch compared to what people did with camcorder footage. And the stuff does get watched, as opposed to being just stored away forever. I also expect that my family will find it very interesting decades from now.

Along these lines, I've been using a scanner to digitize 45 year old family slides from when we lived overseas. (See the scanner forum) After digitally repairing them, I feed the .jpg's into the video editing program, add titles and transitions, and go through the same steps to produce VHS tapes so my parents can watch the old family slides on tv. Amazing that such heirlooms would intersect with digital technology almost half a century after they were taken, and come to life again.

So I'm fairly happy that after over two years of stumbling and frustration, I am producing movies of the activities I wanted to record. This is the goal I had in mind when I first heard of these cameras, and I've made it there. Now it's just a question of continuing to raise the quality.

[fishycomics]

Ulead vodeo suiet e 8se is the software that is a dvd recordable with the newer hybrids the only best thing Ispan did for the camera hanshing and dxg gave out the power director6 and yes no dvd recording there are bugs i must delete and reinstal as well I cannot load a ,ovie

excellent features but

one software haswhatt he otehr may not and try using different ones to combine titles effects and tranistions now ciberliner video works 6 is just plane fun but lacks a dvd burn tol as well

The MPVR has this issue but was easily fixed with firmware a matter of how many times you load itin to get it out.

The vid.aud is not waht we;re talking about its the ,movie converting correct

when you convert with Arc the camera or hybrid no matter which one. you must have the FPS at 29.7 the resolution size at 320x240 and the bitrate at 1.5mb or kpps and the sound at 125kb mpeg4 encoding all our vids will dosplay properly and also no vid aud sync at all due to not knowing you need to cut .3 seconds of

as well for NTSC as well for PAL SGSPIRIT excellent point of view:|

[stanley_c_wong]

sgspirit wrote:

After two years of struggling to get movies made from clips taken by the hybrid cameras I've had, and processed into those movies using the bundled software, and always running into some problems, I've finally been able to replay movies with no problems.

Using the Ulead Video Studio 8 included with the DDV-920, I dragged some clips onto the storyboard line, then:

- Create Video File
- select Xvid
- Choose the default, which is Microsoft AVI files, already with the parameters used by the camera
- Save to the Movie folder on the camera, using CLIPxxxx.avi as a name. (Replace xxxx with numbers)

It plays, with the sound seemingly in synch, with no corrupt pixel boxes on the screen.

I haven't figured out how to include stills in the storyboard, but I've just started, and presumably it can process output from other dv editing programs that do include stills.

This is a big breakthrough for me, because finally I can make movies out of the clips and stills, and copy them back to the camera for replay to copy onto VCR tape.

I was wondering if anyone could help me.

I have used the above mentioned method but withlimited success.

OK. What I really wanted was to watch my avi files on my Digilife DDV-M1. I had high hopes for it as it was advertised as having PMP features.

It came bundled with Ulead VideoStudio 8.0. Using the method as prescribed by the camcorder user manual, Batch Convert, I was not successful in converting other avi format files into that playable by the camcorder.

I stumbled across the above method by trial and error. I found that I could successfully convert SHORT video clips into a format that could be played on the DDV-M1. However, when I tried to convert clips in excess of a few mintues, using the SAME METHOD, one of two things occurred. Either the clip had no sound, even when played on my PC or my camcorder would simply shutdown by itself. I have successfully converted clips up to 20 mins, but without sound.

I would think that the "no sound" issue would be a Ulead problem, as the clip has no sound even on my PC. But I do not seem to find any reference of this on the Ulead forums. I also felt that the camcorder shutdown because the file size was too big. While those 300Mb or less were OK, I noted that above 300MB, all my trials were not sucessful. Could it be that there is some time-out limit or some internal memory limit?

I would really want to watch my TV programs, which are about 43 mins long, on my camcorder.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

[sgspirit]

Yes, I ran into the limited running time issue also. I forget which combination of equipment did that, but I only got a few minutes. Long enough to test it and declare the method a success, but a failure the first time I tried it for real. Really annoying.

I think the Aiptek MPVR owners have been ok with their setup. The MPVR comes with a conversion program, which seems to be the key. Rather than the bundled video editing software outputting a movie that "should" play on the camera, but doesn't.

My Samsung i6 came with a conversion program that successfully converts .avi files (or most anything else) to a format that plays on the camera. The trouble with it is that it compresses the movies so that even though they look fine on the camera's small screen, they look crappy if you replay the movie by feeding it from the camera to a tv. They do, however take up half as much memory space as the unconverted movies. About 250Mb for a 30-minute movie, while the equivalent movie in .avi is twice the size.

So to play the movies in full quality on the tv, I still have to make a DVD copy.

[fishycomics]

you are correct SgSpirit but

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Aiptek joined up with Arc a software or Program company.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Arc converter will be a super easy program that gets the video on the hybrid with ease

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"I was able to at one time, and posted up a few times a how to.....

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"placed windos moviemaker video onto the Mustek dv3000.3500 and all my hybrids.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"We talked about this before PMP's were notavailable and soon as they came out. now Pmp's are in most devices today?

[stanley_c_wong]

SUCCESS!SUCCESS!SUCCESS!SUCCESS!SUCCESS!

I managed to convert a 43min long video file into a file that plays on my Digilife DDV-M1!! No quaility loss in audio and video! No long load times!

There are some drawbacks though. I will cover that later.

What I used: DDV-M1, Ulead VideoStudio 8.0 (yes, the original bundled software!).

Here are the steps:

1. Open Ulead VideoStudio 8.0.

2. Select Batch Convert. Add the video clips you want to convert.

3. Convert.

4. Rename clip to CLIP000X. Up to here it is the same as in the user manual but...

5. Create a folder in the SD card "300MEDIA". Save the clip in here!

Viola! You are done! It is quite simple! I wonder why the heck the manufacturers did not put that extra step in their User Manual!

I go the idea for "300MEDIA" from a post in Steve Forums. I cannot remember the author but kudos to him/her! The post stated that the Digilife camcorders were more forgiving of video files stored in this folder. But you need to create it yourself!

Drawbacks: I had a 608x328 pixel video file format. It was converted to 640x480. So the file size went up from 300MB plus to 400MBplus. I can only fit 2 episodes into 1 GB card. Also the aspect ratio had changed.

I think I can use the "drag to workspace" and "Custom" convert option but unless you really know what you are doing you might end up with a non-working file.

And the conversion time is at least twice the real time of the original clip!

Lots ondrawbacks but at least I now had a PMP for real!:blah:

[sgspirit]

Congratulations and a huge thanks for this great contribution. Come to think of it, my Samsung i6 keeps movies in a \PMP folder, and the 920 keeps them in a \Media folder, so what you found makes complete sense.

Unlike the manufacturers failing to mention this, which makes no sense at all. All this customer frustration because they consistently failed to mention this detail. Amazing!