dslr video

[U-Man]

So. I can do video with my Canon dSLR. But the file is this huge RAW thing that I can’t e-mail to Grandma. What should I use to compress and clip and whatnot the videos?

I have zero experience with this. I’m working on a PC, not a Mac. Free is good.

[CauseISaidSo]

My 30D doesn’t do video, so I don’t know exactly what format the “huge RAW thing” is. Looking at the specs on B&H, it appears that all Canon video-capable dSLRs use the MOV format (Apple’s QuickTime).

I’m not sure, but I think that Windows Movie Maker supports that format, or possibly can with a codec download from Apple. WMM is free and is included on a lot of recent to semi-recent machines. You could also probably look for a download link on Microsoft.com.

Using WMM, you can import your source movie and then edit it and downscale it for frame and file size so that it’s a size emailable to Grandma. Be warned that scaling a video of non-trivial length to emailing size is going to severely impact its quality.

If you’re not concerned with it being publically accessible, you could also try uploading to YouTube. Having never done that, though, I’m not sure what input types they accept or whether they auto-scale incoming videos. I think rav has done some YouTubing, so he might be able to offer some insight there.

Finally, have you looked in your Canon software for anything video related? I don’t know if there is or isn’t, but I’d be slightly surprised if Canon didn’t provide something for its video-enabled cameras.

Sorry I couldn’t help with more specifics.

[ravnostic]

Youtube supports the following video formats:

?WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)
?.MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – (typically supporting h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)
?.AVI (Many cameras output this format – typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)
?.MPEGPS (Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)
?.WMV
?.FLV (Adobe – FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio) (yay! They added .flv!)

My Canon doesn’t do video, but your software should be able to convert it to one of these formats. You can upload up to a 2 gig file. Window’s movie maker can help you convert it to a more compressed .avi if you need to, but some .avi formats don’t upload well to youtube (forgive me for not recalling which ones at the moment.)

Keep in mind upload times are a lot slower than download times (usually), so it can take a LONG while to upload to youtube, depending on your connection speed. When I’ve had video, it’s most often from my morpheus program, and I usually will compress them to cut down the time it takes to post. Such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kSMTEbeWbg

It was (if I recall correctly) about a gig, cut down to about 200meg for posting. Didn’t degrade it much, either; windows movie maker is pretty good for that.

Hope this helps. You can also use movie maker to burn onto a cd-rom.

[CauseISaidSo]

After doing some more research, I found that the video form is H.264 MOV, so that should be YouTube-compatible already.

On the site where I learned that, I also found a link to this software: http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html
It’s freeware that will read the H.264 format and convert/compress to other formats but it doesn’t appear to have the editing abilities of WMM. I’ve never used it but it appears to be legit.

Finally (again), you may have to install Apple’s QuickTime (if you don’t already have it) in order for WMM to read your video files. If that fails and you want to use WMM, you could use the previous software to convert to another format and then edit that in WMM.

[orionid]

I can’t speak for freeness, but I use Magix Video Pro, which the lastest version tends to retail between $50-70.

Nothing from my slr (but it does video), but most of the stuff on my youtube channel was edited with magix, including all the navy music videos. The two rocket videos were with WMM.

[nobigdeal]

I use video spin for simple video editing. I also have the full version of Pinnacle studio but I find the free one works for most of the stuff I need to do.
http://www.videospin.com/Redesign/

[U-Man]

I’ve said it before…you guys rock. Seriously, thank you for the ideas. I’ll see if I can check them out tonight.

I got a Canon 7D a few months back. (The 40D sort of died – but that had nothing to do with being in my boat’s live well full of water. 🙁 Facepalm. I thought the plug was in. It wasn’t. Oops. And I have a Storm Case and just didn’t use it that day…) Anyway, I have a 7D and did video of my eldest doing an interpretive speech last night. About 7 minutes = 3.2 gigs! That’s HD for you.

By the way, she totally kicked ass with her speech. It was all memorized and she barely faltered. She looked really comfortable and I actually got ‘choked-up’ proud of her. 🙂 She did a bit about Little Red Riding Hood. But in this one the bears press charges for breaking and entering and she gets tossed in jail.

[CauseISaidSo]

Good grief, that’s horrible! (The camera, I mean, not your daughter’s speech!) That belongs in kashari’s thread of woe, Weep with me fellow Farktographers.

How do you like the 7D compared to the 40D? I’ve got a 30D and have been lusting after a 7D for quite a while now (or maybe even a 5D, but it doesn’t take EF-S lenses and I have an EF-S 10-22mm that I like).

And congrats to your daughter. My son did something similar where they put a storybook character on trial. I think he was the defending attorney, but I don’t remember the actual character they used.

[LeicaLens]

By the way, she totally kicked ass with her speech. It was all memorized and she barely faltered. She looked really comfortable and I actually got ‘choked-up’ proud of her. 🙂 She did a bit about Little Red Riding Hood. But in this one the bears press charges for breaking and entering and she gets tossed in jail.

There were bears in Little Red Riding Hood? Not Goldilocks? I thought there was only a wolf, a woodcutter/woodsman, Little Red Riding Hood, and of course the zombie grannie.

In Texas, they have a version where the Three Bears come back to find cute little Goldilocks asleep on Little Bear’s bed, and they invoke the Castle Doctrine.
Boy, did that ending surprise the kids.

[U-Man]

There were bears in Little Red Riding Hood? Not Goldilocks? I thought there was only a wolf, a woodcutter/woodsman, Little Red Riding Hood, and of course the zombie grannie.

Damn. You’re right. It was Goldie. 😳

[LeicaLens]

There were bears in Little Red Riding Hood? Not Goldilocks? I thought there was only a wolf, a woodcutter/woodsman, Little Red Riding Hood, and of course the zombie grannie.

Damn. You’re right. It was Goldie. 😳

Looks like someone was too busy with his camera during the show…. 😉

[U-Man]

No. Really. I set it up on a tripod, hit ‘record’ and forgot about it.

I’ve reached the understanding that if I spend too much attention on the pics and vids I will have no real memory of the event.

[Curious]

In Texas, they have a version where the Three Bears come back to find cute little Goldilocks asleep on Little Bear’s bed, and they invoke the Castle Doctrine.
Boy, did that ending surprise the kids.

that’s hilarious.

[Author]

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