Where to even start, a trillion questions!

[socalrailfan]

OK, so I buy this new compact digital camera yesterday. I get home and find out it shoots video, suhweet! It's a 8mp camera and the video shoots in 16x9 format, suhweet again!

So I shoot some video today, here's where it gets weird. How do I know if what's it's shooting is decent video. Here's some stats from one video.

video avi file size 299mb's
image width 848 pixels
image height 480 pixels
duration 3:16
audio bit rate 112kbps
audio sample 8 bit
video frame rate 30 frames/second
video data rate 1523 kbps
video sample size 24bit
video compression lead-mjpeg

So is this decent? Is that a normal file size. I can't imagine that's the size of the file that would be uploaded to the website. So how is that changed.

Newbie in need of help!

[bigbassloyd]

file size sounds about right to me..

in video mode, my Canon S3IS shoots over 100mb a minute in 640x480 30 fps video. :)

the easiest thing to do Dave is use Windows Movie Maker to edit and compress the video.

for XP: click start > all programs > accessories > towards the bottom of the list

it has a wizard that will walk you through the steps and let you compress it how you want.

This video was orignally 533mb out of the camera (4:40 run time), I used movie maker to compress it to just under 67mb for uploading to Rail-Videos, without shortening the video.

http://www.rail-videos.net/video/view.php?id=762

Good luck!

Loyd L.

[Kilroy1313]

(...)
Newbie in need of help!
Hi, Kinda Newbie myself (even with all these movies now) unfortunately can't help you much with all these technical terms as they are not my best friends.
Agree to what «bigbassloyd» said: Take that Windows Movie Maker and go!
(I use XP Movie Maker version 5.1 and did not change a thing on the options; and by chance everything worked as good as it had to, so I don't have problems posting my videos)
1st: Link your computer with the camera via FIREWIRE cable (hope you have one!)
Put on your camera in VIEW Modus, then Movie Maker just should open up by itself (otherwise you have to open some Video Import function; and you have your camera to be recognized by the computer/Windows Movie Maker first) asking you a few things, for example if you want the whole tape/content of your cam' been recorded (for clips you should prefer choosing: only part of the video to record!) and where you want your video to be recorded: My Video's or so... and after you did that a window opens with which you may operate your camera via your computer screen: means first you START RECORDING then you go below the display window and from there you may START/STOP etc. at the end you FINISH RECORDING.
Movie Maker edits a complete movie file in the folder you first have chosen and opens some shortcuts of it in a folder in Movie Maker, so you may work with it; the original remains preserved in the first folder !
My Tip: Find yourself a recorded part you like to make a clip of, record even a bit more on the beginning and at the end, you may easyly cut it off later as Movie Maker cuts every change or move of camera in separate sequences...
;-) Hope this could help !

[socalrailfan]

Thanks I ended up changing my format from 16x9 to 640x480 and used MS movie maker to get my first video approved! Woohoo! I would like to find a better editor and eventually a better camera, but for now I'll use what I gots.