Digital video camera noobie

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The Artist formerly known as Turbo84
Joined
Mar 30, 2008
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Clinging to my guns and religion in KCMO.
Bought an inexpensive video camera off ebay a while ago to put in the car for track days. Despite its modest cost the camera seems to do a darn nice job recording parts of the last couple of outings I had. The difficult (and very frustrating) part of the deal is that the user's manual is very poorly translated (I think you can guess from what language) and I've had to essentially figure out much of the workings by trial and error. I'm slowly getting things figured out, as I'd like to eventually save a couple track episodes to youtube.
I'm curious if anyone here is reasonably experienced in uploading videos to youtube. In addition to the normal questions I'm curious how to edit the length of the videos. These have a few minutes of modest speed engine and tire warmup laps, along with end of session cooldown laps, which are rather boring to watch. Also I'm trying to figure out the best compromise settings to get decent/acceptable video without eating up a lot of memory. The videos I have seemed to have turned out well, but damn, ate up a bunch of memory.
Any input or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike
 
buy a larger memory card for it

Storage isn't the problem. Got a 32 GB card in it at the moment. I want to reduce the size of the files I have to send or edit.

You know sometimes it is best to leave figuring out complicated stuff like this to a 12y/o works like a charm for me having my son figure out these technological nightmares. :photo:
 
what I figured out was open folder it is in. double click on it and it should open in windows live gallery. Then click edit,organize,or share in top left corner. Then it should open a new window and click edit and above the picture there should be a menu with a bunch of stuff click properties and click resize
 
I'm using Adobe Premiere, I usually put all the recorded file in a folder, create a new project, pick sections I want off the "rushes", edit all that into a proper video then export it to a video file.
That's when you reach the export stage you really need to choose the video compression and image resolution you want. Those will determine how big your video will be.
Until then don't recode the video, you'd only loose quality. If you can't open the file you camera created into you editing software, you need to make sur it has the correct codec. Adapt the software, not what you shoot.

I know Premiere is rather overkill for what you aiming for. my .02c
 
I use Windows Movie Maker and it is good enough for what I want .... if you want to make this a hobby and spend some time with video editing: Adobe Premier seems to be the best software but just like Photoshop it can do a lot more than yo really need and it requires some "learning" ....

Movie Maker is rather simple: start a new project, add the video files, crop the files (set start and end), merge files and hit "save as" .... you can choose quality and file size....
 
buy a larger memory card for it

Storage isn't the problem. Got a 32 GB card in it at the moment. I want to reduce the size of the files I have to send or edit.

You know sometimes it is best to leave figuring out complicated stuff like this to a 12y/o works like a charm for me having my son figure out these technological nightmares. :photo:

:shocking:

I had a good laugh earlier today, and so you managed to top THAT one, gotta love it......

Then this afternoon trying to esplain to wife's grand daughter about frequency and wave length.....as related to a given time base....kid is only 14 here in a minit......wife asked me to help explain some questions on a online course.....after about 30 minits, I think the kid understood...based on that if you cram 4 events into a second, and then double the event count to 8 events, you have just 1/2 the time for each event to take place..... and so to relate that to her understanding of light and color spectrum.... going from power lines to radio, to MW through light......

shit that I not really thought much about in like 1/2 a century, had to get my thinking cap on again.....:shocking::drink:
 
For 20 years or so I was a Microsoft devotee - buy tired of the upgrades that constantly left previous documents, photos & illustrations in limbo & difficult to edit, change & upgrade.

2-3 years ago I got an iMac & use iMovie to imitate Cecil B DeMille, et. al. It's intuitive, pretty easy & I've got about 75+ movies on u-tube of racing, vintage cars, my cars, my dog singing, etc.

I haven't been able to abandon Microsoft completely because I have so much data from prior years; however I will never add more to Bill Gates MS collection plate. All new work is on my iMac. As a result of this prior dependance on MS, I now have 4 computers on my desk - I use a large conference table. One 1Mac, one MS XP, one MS 2000 & even one MS Windows 98 for some older programs that just don't run on. It's kind of like being ambidextrous in computers in a sense. I use my left hand to draw illustrations on paper & my right for drawing with a mouse. I've always though that was weird also. But that fit's me :)

I bought a new large screened expensive HP laptop with the Windows that came out about 2 years ago, but became frustrated & it's just parked on a book shelf. It's been an expensive dust collector when I had to jump through hoops to get video's transferred to from my Sony camera to it. With the iMac just about everything is drag & drop. Crashes & lock ups are rare.

Steve Jobs RIP - Apple stock increased 80% since he passed just over a year ago. Regretfully I own none. My Morgan Stanley/ Smith Barney advisors aren't worth a cold chit.
 
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