best way to edit and publish videos

[mills705]

Hi,
Im a technical newbie and not the best on a computer compared to some.
I have an intova sport hd2 and dived with it for the first time at the weekend.
Having cut the video I put it together using windows movie maker with no audio. On saving the video I noticed how large it was.... 100mb!? The video is only just under 2 mins long.
It was shot using 720p instead of full HD.
Why is it so long?! I have full length films that are 700-900 mb long!?

 

[dfx]

First of all it obviously depends on the video resolution. Lower resolution video takes up less space, but you probably know this already. Same is true for the frame rate (frames per second). Other than that, it mostly depends on the video compression used.

When saving or exporting a video, you can choose between several different file formats (for example MOV, MP4 or MKV). Each file format can accommodate a number of different compression methods (AKA codecs), both for video and for audio. Some codecs are better at compressing video than others; some are better at preserving the image quality than others; some are faster at compressing than others; and some allow you to adjust all kinds of parameters to make it faster, slower, better quality, worse quality, etc.

The most commonly used video codec these days is H.264 (which you can have inside any of the 3 mentioned file formats), which is also what the camera itself produces (i.e. the video files coming straight out of the camera are H.264 compressed video). H.264 can do a number of things for you, depending on how you configure it. First of all, the image quality is adjustable. If you lower the image quality, the video will look worse, but the files will be smaller. Higher quality increases the file size.

Then you can adjust all kinds of compression features, normally done through codec profiles. Those basically affect how hard the codec tries to compress the video. The result is that encoding (saving, exporting) the video takes longer to complete, but the file will be smaller at the same image quality. Or you can speed up the process, giving you a larger file at the same quality. This can go to an extreme, where it can take hours to encode just a few minutes of video. This is how you get your high quality full length movies with a pretty small file size, it just takes forever to encode them.

I know nothing about WMM, so a generic explanation is all I can offer. You should be able to figure out which codec WMM is using and possibly make it use a different one. You may have to install some additional software (codec packs or w/e) to make H.264 available to you.

 

[victorzamora]

Your full-length 700-900MB films aren't very high quality. They're extremely low quality with extremely high compression rates. The video you shot was probably in an uncompressed format and in a much higher quality. You've got to remember, 700mb movies are typically 264p at 24 frames per second. That's 4 million pixels per second. 1080p at 60fps is 124 million pixels per second. Even before compression, you're talking about 31 times as much data per given length.

---------- Post added February 25th, 2014 at 09:20 AM ----------

Also, how do you have WMM? That was the greatest free program! I'm pissed they pulled it off of Windows 7.

 

[danvolker]

Hi,
Im a technical newbie and not the best on a computer compared to some.
I have an intova sport hd2 and dived with it for the first time at the weekend.
Having cut the video I put it together using windows movie maker with no audio. On saving the video I noticed how large it was.... 100mb!? The video is only just under 2 mins long.
It was shot using 720p instead of full HD.
Why is it so long?! I have full length films that are 700-900 mb long!?

Sounds like you output ( rendered) your video in the windows AVI format.
Personally...I think windows movie maker is a cr*p rpgram....if you care enough about the videos you shoot underwater to spend the money on the camera, the dives, and the time in editing....you should spend $70 or so on a decent video editing program....My suggestion is to go with Sony's
Sony Creative Software - Online Store - Movie Studio 13 Platinum


This is easy to use, intuitive, and time using this one will teach you how to edit with Vegas Pro, if you ever evolve to need pro level cameras and editing equipment.

Like dfx says, the edited video needs to be "rendered" as an h264 or mp4 video.....If Youtube is the primary objective, then you really don't have to do 1080p...720 p for the render is fine for how most youtube users will watch ...then again, if your video is good, with nice detail, then it should be rendered as 1080 p...and youtube will create lower quality renditions for those with slow connections.

Some of us drop a music track on the video.....easy to do....and easy to annoy people with if your taste in music is poor

 

[lostcajun]

I use GoPro 3 Black, edit with Final Cut Pro, and publish to Vimeo.

 

[Kharon]

Some of us drop a music track on the video.....easy to do....and easy to annoy people with if your taste in music is poor

Do you use free music from the web? Can MP3's be used? I added some "classical" music from free web sources and my Daughter say it is beautiful but sounds sad (LOL). If I could use MP3's or Wave files I could brighten it up.

 

[danvolker]

Do you use free music from the web? Can MP3's be used? I added some "classical" music from free web sources and my Daughter say it is beautiful but sounds sad (LOL). If I could use MP3's or Wave files I could brighten it up.

I use Sonicfire Pro Software and Royalty Free Music ...but was able to charge some land based video jobs for the cost of the software and good sized collection of music.....
Also....some of the music I use is from friends of mine that are musicians with their own original music.....such as this one:

[video=youtube_share;PIaXVw61qJI]http://youtu.be/PIaXVw61qJI[/video]

This song "Paradise", was written by my friend John Leaman, and played by he and some artists he got together.
When you ask musicians if you can use their music, as long as it can help popularize their band/music, many independent artists are very happy to do this. Make sure you ask and get permission though!!!!


As to what format....you NEVER want to start with the very low quality of an MP3 audio....Wave file ( this is what CD's are in) is much better. If you are on a Mac, the "wave file equivalent" is an Aif file.
Whatever distortion is in the audio you get, it will be exaggerated in the video rendering....so with the wave file and it's much cleaner sound, the video result will sound better at 1080p playback.

I actually lay down a 24 bit/96 Hz or better ( 192) whenever I can get a 24 bit master...And this will sound better than CD quality would sound in my final product.

 

[Tigerman]

...
Also, how do you have WMM? That was the greatest free program! I'm pissed they pulled it off of Windows 7.

its availble through the windows Live stuff.
I downloaded it just a couple of weeks ago..

 

[diversteve]

Also, how do you have WMM? That was the greatest free program! I'm pissed they pulled it off of Windows 7.

Windows Essentials - Download Windows Live Essentials

Do the custom installation and uncheck all the other stuff you likely don't want/need first. For me that was everything else...lol.

 

[MrChen]

Be careful with licensed music and YouTube. If they flag it as having licensed music, you won't be able to play your video from a smart phone.