Talk about starting the week with a challenge! I hope by sharing how I spent a large slab of Monday morning dealing with the mysteries of video file formats and video editing I can help someone who might be facing similar challenges.
Probably nothing to see here for video editing experts.
The background is that yesterday I took a video of champion surfer Taj Burrow, competing in the Quiksilver Pro championships at nearby Snapper Rocks. I used a Samsung Digimax L85 digital camera, which saved the file in .avi format.
This morning, wanting to do a little editing, basically just trimming a bit off the end of the clip, I tried using Windows Movie Maker, Sony Vegas 7.0 and even, as supplied with the camera, Samsung’s Digimax Master. No success with any of these. I could run the video but not edit it.
A Google search turned up a neat online tool, MediaConverter.
This uses a simple five step process.
- file selection
- new file type
- additional options
- conversion
- download
Helpfully, there are three options for the file selection:
- Convert a video directly from various portals
- Convert a video or music by url (http, ftp, mms, mmst, mmsh and rtsp)
- Upload a video, audio or office file from your local hard disk
I converted the .avi file to Windows Media Format (.wmf) and was able then to edit it with Sony Vegas 7.0.
I saved the edited file as a Sony Vegas file (.veg) and then went to render the file for publishing. Seeing a huge array of file format options, I did an online search to discover what would be the most suitable format for uploading to YouTube.
I found the amusing video below:
Taking the advice offered in the video, I then chose for my surfing video the option Sony AVC/AAC(.mp4), which is identified as having the following properties:
Audio: 128 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, AAC.
Video: 512 Kbps, 29.970 fps, 320×240
Close enough to the specifications in the instructional video.
My first surfing video has now been completed and uploaded.
