Windows Editing Software Help PLEASE

[Guest]

I have a problem with getting my film onto the pc.
It is a digital camcorder I have connected and the pc has found it ok.
In fact when I use window media player to capture it, it works as long as I do it “manual” option

When I try doing the automatic capture it works in as much as it gets the data onto my hard drive and I can play it however it wont let me open it using Media editor as it says “ the file has not been indexed” ( the program crashes)


So for now I have used the manual option which is a pain. The file that I have captured this way has let me try to edit it. This time however this is where I fall flat on my face L
The file is put in the time bar as one big chunk how do I cut and paste the bits together the way I want?

Yes I tried reading the help files and gave up ;/

If anyone can help it would be appreciated perhaps even talk me through it on msn or skype


Many thanks

A frustrated film director

aka Gav

[dreadnort]

If your using Windows XP then try using Windows Movie Maker, this is built into windows and is better at capturing video.

It is also a good basic video editor

[Guest]

Sorry my mistake it is Windows Movie Maker could not think of the correct name when I doing the above post

[jheaton]

using the little preview window at rh side find the point where you want to cut film and look for icon which looks like 2 film cells side by side with a line between.this splits your film at that frame.
cut your film up this way and delete the chunks you dont want
then at top of toolbar select "tools" then "video transitions" choose a way of linking the clips such as "fade" or "dissolve" and drag it between each cut clip.this is easier to do in "storyboard mode" than in "timeline"
remember to save as you go along as Movie Maker does hang occasionally but once you get into it's easy to use

good luck
janet

[Andre]

Try importing the DV footage using a stand-alone program. I use WinDV, which is simple & tiny, but works every time. It can be found at windv.mourek.cz/

Andre

[Guest]

Thanks Andrew give you a guess what i will be doing later

[AndyJ]

Originally Posted by andrewilley

Try importing the DV footage using a stand-alone program. I use WinDV, which is simple & tiny, but works every time. It can be found at windv.mourek.cz/

Andre

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Reading the blub on that there page Andre, I see it says "No dropped frames."

I thought "real" dropped frames were problems with the source media, not just any bottlenecks in the transfer.

For example, I seem to have more dropped frames on Sony than TDK in my world.

Any thoughts?

[Gaz]

i am having a simular knightmare. i have all my holiday video on an external hard drive and i can watch it on media player but when i try to import it to movie maker it wont let me. i dont want to keep changing its format incase i lose quality and i need to edit it can someone please help me

[Andre]

Originally Posted by AndyJ72

Reading the blub on that there page Andre, I see it says "No dropped frames."

I thought "real" dropped frames were problems with the source media, not just any bottlenecks in the transfer

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With the speed of modern PCs you shouldn't really get dropped frames any more, but if your system was not up to spec you could get the situation where the firewire data is streaming in faster than your system can write it to disc. And if that happens, the software has no choice but to skip frames to allow it to catch up.

Andre

[Andre]

Originally Posted by Gaz

i am having a simular knightmare. i have all my holiday video on an external hard drive and i can watch it on media player but when i try to import it to movie maker it wont let me. i dont want to keep changing its format incase i lose quality and i need to edit it can someone please help me

See more...

Try downloading something like VirtualDubMod and get it to do basic a "Save As..." with the 'Exact Stream Copy' mode selected. That will write out a new file with new header data, etc - but the AVI bitstream itself will stay intact. Might clean the file up enough to load into another program. Adobe Premiere can do the same thing if you Export to the exact same format as the input media (I think) but you have to pay for it!

Andre