Sanyo videos not showing up on my computer...

[Rubiconxing]

Hi everyone

I recently purchased the Sanyo CG10 and shot a few videos with it. When I linked the USB cable to the computer and copied the files and then opened them, I could hear the audio but the picture wasn't coming up (choppy colors). I wonder if this has to do with the SD memory card (3GB) I put in from my old Panasonic D-Snap.... does re-using a memory card cause this? I'm so confused. I didn't have difficulty with my other camcorders and I don't know what to do.

PLEASE HELP!!! Thanks in advance

* Also: I'm wondering whether or not I should return the 32GB memory card. Is 3GB plenty for a college student fooling around? I haven't opened it and I'm considering returning it. It doesn't improve the actual camera's quality, right? It just lets me store more videos/photos?

[subc]

When you say "3GB" you mean 32 gigabytes? because after all, there is no such thing as a 3GB capacity SD card (unless 1GB is occupied with data already, but still makes it a 4GB sd card).

32GB is plenty! it really goes a looong way and you can store so much on it. Let me put it this way, I spent about 3 months shooting here and there, little clips, some pics, etc, and finally filled a 4GB card on my Sanyo camera.

The best way to transfer your videos and pictures from a CG10 to your computer, is to simply insert the SD card on the card reader slot of the computer, and if you don't have one, then I highly suggest you to buy a USB SD memory adapter. It will make things soooo much easier (no cables, no mess, quick copy). Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010Z294O

or just the card reader:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q3IUV2 I actually have this reader and it's most excellent (although now I use the built-in reader on my notebook).

And as far as the picture not coming up: I'm going to take a guess and say it's a missing codec (which is basically a piece of software that de-compresses and displays a video on screen).

First I suggest using Videolan Media Player ( http://www.videolan.org/ ), or Quicktime player (latest) to open and view your video. If that does not work (but I'm sure it will), then you can install these codecs designed to support all the new filetypes (including the one the sanyo CG10 shoots on: H264): http://www.cccp-project.net/ . There is a "Download for Xp, Vista" link in that page.

And finally, you can re-use and re-write an SD memory card thousands or even millions of times without problems.

[Rubiconxing]

Oops; sorry, I meant a 4GB card. I guess I'll return the 32GB card if 4 is plenty (the guy at the store pressured me to spend the money... I knew it wasn't a good idea)

Thanks for the help! I'm going to try it out right now. BTW, do you know of any good video-editing programs? Perhaps free ones? Thanks

[subc]

4GB instead of a 32GB card only means that you will have to transfer the stuff you record (or pics you take) to your computer more often. According to Sanyo's website, you will be able to continously shoot just under an hour of video at the highest quality on a 4GB card.

Free video editing? mm, depends on what you are actually trying to "edit" (just cuts or transitions, titles) and on your operating system.
Video editing is no small feat, specially with free programs (more complicated and no instructions)

[Rubiconxing]

Thanks much for the info! I use Vista and I'm looking for the basics... yeah, cutting and writing text is good enough.

[subc]

Well, the only buit-in tool in Vista is 'Windows Movie Maker' (is on the "all programs" list, a couple spaces below Media Player) , which is what a large majority of youtubers out there use. Sadly, there is no native support for the MP4 files from Sanyo Cameras. In other words, Movie Maker doesn't even recognize such files as videos.

My suggestion would be to convert your MP4 videos to something that movie maker can work with, such as AVI files with MJPEG compression. This generates videos a little bit larger than the originals, but the quality remains pretty much the same.

There is a number of tools to convert MP4 videos, but my preference is avidemux (free tool). You can get this tool from here: http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home...jects#avidemux
or from here: http://avidemux.razorbyte.com.au/

All you got to do really is open the video*, select video compression (MJPEG), audio compression (PCM), file format (AVI), and then from the file menu select : file - save - save video.. See the image below.

Select a directory to save the new video, write a filename WITH THE EXTENSION (in this case .AVI) and wait a few seconds.



Then load such AVI in Movie Maker and do your editing.

* If when you open the video on Avidemux, you get some questions.. answer "NO" and then "YES" to the window dialogs.

[Rubiconxing]

WOW!!!! Thank you so much!!!! This is perfect, you're such a great help!

[subc]

no problem, make sure to share your videos with the forum when you make some

good luck

[Cresho]

if you dont want to convert, look for FFMPEG for vista in google or xvid for vista exe installers. I'm too lazy to search it at the moment but I did get a laptop with vista to view your videos without reencoding. Just drag and drop and veiew. avidemux is not bad either. this is definitely a codec issue.