Mucking around with video

BruceB · 12 April 2009, 23:59

I have been mucking around with our normal camera to see if it is worth getting something better for the boat.
The images are low quality but are making me more interested in getting something better.
Bearing in mind I don't want to spend loads of money and it has to survive salt water splashing and a bit of abuse what does anybody recommend and what software for editing?
I just stuck this straight together without editing and the quality could oviously be better but it bought a smile to my face watching the mutt enjoy himself..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUla5exMkrI

Poly · 13 April 2009, 08:08

bruce, windows (xp, so i presume vista too) comes with a media editing package (so no cost) which after reading the tutorials is fairly simple. i think its called something like microsoft movie maker.

probably considered crap by serious people but just as wordpad can type letters and so if thats all you do - full blown word is overkill, the same applies here.

chris123 · 13 April 2009, 08:57

As Polwart says, Windows Movie Maker is not too bad - the options are a bit limited, but I would think it will do pretty much everything you want.

It was a couple of years ago I did some back to back testing, but we looked at:

Microsoft Movie Maker
Adobe Premier Elements
Pinnacle Studio
Ulead Video Studio

With the exception of Movie Maker, the others were all around £50.

Movie Maker was good, but too limiting for what we wanted to do.

Adobe Premier Elements had by far the biggest range of options, but was way too complicated for our needs, and was relatively slow (we were running on a 'minimum spec' pc).

Ulead Video Studio had the simplest and cleanest layout, but was very slow.

Pinnacle Studio was a good all rounder.

I would start off with Movie Maker. If you do find it too limiting, then the other three all have 30 day free trials before you have to buy.

Cheers

Chris

JSP · 13 April 2009, 09:35

Movie maker is a great little tool and Like those above I think you should use that first until you reach it's limitations. Pinnacle Studio studio is ok but I hate the way you have to pay extra to unlock things. I found Adobe prem elements grear and I then moved on to Premier pro.

I'm not to up on what's what with video cameras so can't help there.

roywebster · 13 April 2009, 15:34

Having used still for over 40 yrs both as a snapshotter and semi pro I decided to try video for a bit of fun. I hate it but will not give up until I master it. The Main problem that I have is I bought a Sony Camera and packaged with it comes Edit software called Vegas . Avoid at all costs unless you are well into video making.

Roy

BruceB · 01 May 2009, 23:03

I ended up buying a small video camera with editing software built in for around £73 delivered.
Its called a Flip and, while its not exactly cinema quality, its better than the stills camera and is cheap enough that I won't worry dropping it in the water by accident.
I'll play with it over the next few months and see whether its worthwhile spending real money on something better.
It only has one big red button for On/Off so at least the missus should be able to work it

alystra · 05 May 2009, 13:27

Bruce, for what it's worth, now that you've spent some money, I have been involved in a project called Out There for Argyll, an initiative organised by Radio Fyneside. Links www.forargyll.com and www.ardfern.forargyll.com.

We were loaned a Sanyo Xacti, which is waterproof to about a metre, and given training on the editing package that comes with the camera - Adobe Premier Elements 3. I think that's available free. I found the help system quite good.

The Xacti has been improved since the model I've got. We were told to set it to 320 x 240 for YouTube - a mistake I think. This one goes to 640 x 480, and I'll probably be using that in future. The latest models are HD. It's a very handy, easy to use pocket camera, records onto SD cards in mpeg-4 format, which Premiere Elements reads and converts.

Anyway, the results are on my Youtube channel, MoonRakerAfloat ( http://www.youtube.com/MoonRakerAfloat ) or on www.ardfern.forargyll.com, though you have to scroll down a lot to see them all.

The Windows editor is ok but very simple and lacks some basic abilities compared to Premiere Elements. I run that on an old machine with a Pentium 4 and 2 whatevers of memory in XP. It's usable but slightly slow when the video gets over 10 minutes.

A tip we were given by the experts - always work from the 'timeline'.

Cheers, Tony