Video :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

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.

It’s now about two months since I was told about Animoto, when I attended the New York Web 2.0 Meetup Group event. I had a quick look, then put it aside while I dealt with a few more pressing matters.

Animoto is a web application that automatically generates videos using the New York based Animoto Productions company’s Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that “analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film”. Even if you take that, as I do, with a grain of salt, the actual experience is great fun and may well offer a way for small business owners to produce promotional video content without that having to cost an arm and a leg.

The application takes still photos you have on your hard drive, adds music you provide or stock of theirs from which you can choose, and then puts together a video for you. For a very short one, there is no charge.

Leah Maclean’s post last week Even YOU can have video for your business gave me the first example of someone I knew testing the product. I have great respect for Leah’s combination of geek and practical business person, so I was impressed by her opinion that “this leaves YouTube for dead when it comes to small business possibilities”. And you can see the result of Leah’s own experimentation with Animoto at that blog post.

Incentive enough for me to try it out myself.

The result will not be nominated for Cannes, but it was easy – just find photos on the hard drive and upload them, as they are. No tweaking or adjusting required, or trying to comprehend esoteric technical instructions. Definitely point and click.

Here’s the result. Comments welcome. And if you think it’s really bad, I’ll just do another one.

Why not try it yourself? It could help make your website or blog really stand out from the crowd.