Video Experiments

I just bought a digital video camcorder (Sony TRV-340). These are just some silly experiments. This is also a rambling list of my successes and failures trying to video editing. I am a computer geek (over 25 years of working with computers) but not an artist.

Soon, I hope that this will be a HOWTO about making and editing home movies and writing them to CD or DVD

Update: I no longer think that I can write a HOWTO on video editing. There are far too many variables: MPEG-1,
MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVI, MOV, FPS, quality levels, aspect ratios, editing software, camera type, time markings, masaking, transitions, etc. Augh, there is too much stuff to go over! This page is simply what I have done...

What I have: I have a Sony Digital Video Camcorder (TRV-340)(Nice camcorder, it can play/record DV tapes plus play my old analog 8mm tapes from a really old camcorder. Plus, it can record in 0 LUX (no light, it uses infrared). It has a optical 25x zoom and a 700x digital zoom (the digital zoom sucks, don't use this in your buying decisions). It has a firewire port for downloading video (and does time coding) and a USB port for downloading still picture from it's memory stick (note: the firewire cannot download memory stick pictures or movies).
I also have an Apple PowerMac (with 2x1Ghz CPUs (with the "Velocity engine")) and a SunBlade 100 (500Mhz UltraSparc-II). The PowerMac is used for major editing and the SunBlade is used for some burning (the PowerMac does some weird things burning DVDs). I've beren using iMovie on the PowerMac for editing but now I have Final Cut Pro. iMovie is much easier to use! Final Cut Pro has some nice features, but, it is really complicated to use. I'll probably have more to say about Final Cut Pro once I read thru the 30 lbs of manuals that came with it!

My dog Dewey and me on a walk late at night. Dewey is a black standard Schauzer so he's a little hard to see (he's in the bottom right of the picture). This picture is a capture from the camcorder using NightShot. The camcorder has an IR emitter which lights up everything pretty well. This capture was also modified alittle by using an editor to brighten the picture.

These videos are not very good, they need to be brightened alot... The DV tape is much better

test1.avi An avi of the video that this was taken from, 271K

test1.mpg A mpg of the video that this was taken from, 247K

movie3.mov A mov (QuickTime) with titles and a transition 1.3M

movie4.mov A mov with titles and a transition 2.3M

dogs1.mov A mov of our dogs on Labor day 2.7M

Streaming currently doesn't work.

It turns out that most streaming servers use UDP which cannot go thru a firewall with NAT/PAT...

test1 Streaming Video

Sample mov Streaming Video

Sample mp4 Streaming Video

Some cool features of the TRV-340

Digital recording (DV)(Digital Video). Camcorder has both USB and Firewire ports
Still picture capture (JPEG) and MPEG recording onto a memorystick
Infra-red sensor for recording at night (even in 0 LUX)

Other details about these pictures

I'm using an iMac (G3) running MacOS 10.1.5 to process most of these movies and pictures. MacOS X is sort of UNIX based, but I sure wish that I could use my Sun/Solaris computers to do this work (most video type programs don't run on Solaris)
Update, I just bought a Powermac G4 (2x1Ghz CPUs) with MacOS 10.2. The G3 is just not powerful enough to do video editing. I also bought Final Cut Pro v3. I'm alittle disappointed with both the Powermac and Final Cut Pro. The Powermac was really expensive ($2100 8/17/02) and Final Cut Pro is not very easy to use. For simple editing, I would recommend iMovie which comes free on most Apple computers. As for the Powermac, it is supposed to be a "UNIX" based system, however, when it is in OS 9 emulation mode (which FCP uses) one program can lock up the entire system (which FCP has done). I'm not sure why the Linux/Slashdot crowd is going ga ga over Mac OS X. It seems that they are all infatuated with a pretty GUI, I just want a dang computer that doesn't lock up (I have over 15 years experience administering Sun (UNIX) computrers, and they are sweet!).
iMovie is a really cool program for editing video. QuickTime Pro is ok, except it doesn't support MPEG-2 (which is what all DVDs use).
For more info about the DVD mess, go to www.unixhub.com/docs/misc/DVD.html

Humm, this was interesting. If you hit the still picture button while taping the camcorder will record the still shot on tape. This is sort of cool, I was wondering how to use the tape instead if the memorystick for stills.

This is my house and my Corvette :) The TRV-340 takes pretty good still pictures, but, they aren't as good as a digital camera (the TRV-340 is a sub-megapixal camera).