Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Some Video From This Summer/Autumn

It's taken me a while to sort this out, but better late than never I suppose. It's just some video from two sessions earlier this year: one at Halifax and one at the Chill FactorE. Right at the start is the slam that I mentioned from Halifax...

It's been a little bit frustrating to be honest. On my old laptop I had a version of some decent video editting software - which did a good job. I've been unsuccessful installing it on my new laptop; so I'm stuck using Windows Movie Maker.

Movie Maker isn't that bad, and it is free after all. But having the basics only is not what I'm used to, and that's frustrating. What's more, the video output from Movie Maker, when presented by YouTube looks bad. If I choose 4:3 ratio in Movie Maker I get black bars at the top and bottom of the video - because my camera is widescreen. So when I upload it to YouTube, the result is too small, which you'll see below.

If I choose 16:9 in Movie Maker, which is what I should select, it looks fine until it ends up on YouTube, where it is squashed, and basically looks pap.

These aspect problems may be caused by the fact that my camera isn't true-widescreen, which is confusing Movie Maker, maybe not. Has YouTube changed their default to widescreen? Either way, my old software used to handle it fine...

If you're a pc user, what do you use to edit your video? (Actually if you are a Mac user, what do you use?)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice footage. I wish we had a snowflex or indoor hill here in Toronto. For the summer months when there isn't any snow.

You might want to check out vimeo.com as an alternate to YouTube. They are more easy going on odd sized videos and the quality is generally better.

Gavin Hope said...

Hey thanks - I'll check out vimeo and compare, ta, gav

Anonymous said...

Could you please tell me the name of this song?

Hope Sweet Homes said...

Nice video Gav! I especially like the girl at the end that starts at 2.05... he he :o)

Anonymous said...

Great video!

I recently upgraded my rig to a 64-bit machine and OS. I use Adobe Premiere CS4.

Movie Maker is great, but I just find Premiere to be more flexible. It's also easy to use and it's very powerful. I've tried iMovie and I'm not happy with it. Too simple.

I've used Final Cut Pro and it is just as good if not better than Premiere, but I'm more used to Premiere and Adobe applications so I'm happy with that setup.

Keep up the great posts!

Gavin Hope said...

Hey eZe, the song is "I know I'm not wrong" by Fleetwood Mac; thought I'd go a little old school.

Emma, thanks, you're right, the girl at the end is ok - but I think I've seen better :) Seriously though, you're last air is pretty nice, some good pop.

Thanks Allie! I've been following your upgrade on your blog, it's a tight setup. I actually think one of your monitors is the same as the one I've got at work... I used to use Premier Pro, and like it a lot. You're right about Movie Maker, it's ok, it just not as powerful or flexible as the premier versions.

I've still got footage fro Fernie last season to edit... and depending on what film I get this season, I might have to bite the bullet and get some decent software!

Anonymous said...

Hey Gavin, nice video I enjoyed watching it.

For editing on a PC I used Adobe Premier CS4, although it can be a bit overwhelming for the first few attempts. For a Mac, like Allie mentioned above, Final Cut Pro is the way to go.

Gavin Hope said...

Hey Dan,

yeah I was using an old version of Premier Pro. I didn't know many of its features, but enough to feel I had good control over what I wanted to do. I take it CS4 is just their latest release? (he looks on the Adobe website...)