Digital Photography- home videos

Digital Photography - Home Videos

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Personal Video recorders (PVRs) See below New graphic

Video has been a hobby of mine for many years, starting with 8mm cine film. What a chore that was!. Each film was expensive and lasted about 4 minutes. Once processed, if you wanted a longer, edited film you needed a splicer and glue. So, you cut out the bad bits or arranged the whole thing in a different order and hoped the glue would keep the whole thing together. I even had a projector which had a tape attachment and you could make a recording and somehow coordinate it with the film.

Then I found out about video tape and was able to borrow a recorder and camera from the Ely Educational AV Department.

The camera wasn't so bad but the recorder (a Shibaden) was so big it had a handle at each end so two people could carry it ! You had to be the mains supply of course. But I did make a couple of films with it on the 1" x 8" spools. In the end, with the effort of lugging this thing about, I made the decision " I will wait until the technology improves. And so it did. Now you can take video with sound with almost any digital camera or even a mobile telephone. And the digital video camera I now use just sits in the palm of my hand and will take a couple of hours for film complete with sound. And the cost, once you have the camera, is minimal. So, now you can bore your relatives and friends with hours of baby's first steps or whatever.

I don' t regret taking those early 8mm cine films, now saved onto VCR tape or DVD. The kids do love to see themselves when they were younger (40 years ago!)

And now we get invited to weddings for the express purpose of 'doing' the whole thing. And then there is the amateur dramatics, which will be forever forgotten if it was not for our little camera.

So, how about the techniques ?

Firstly, I have copied old cine to tape by projecting it onto a screen or white wall and just setting up the video camera on a tripod to capture it. Slides can be copied this way, too.

Then you can edit VCR tape fairly satisfactorily providing you have two tape recorders (cheap as chips at boot sales now they are going out of fashion). Obviously you need and output from one and an input to the other. This is usually by a SCART plug at the output machine and either Phono or SCART plug at the input machine. Start the first machine to a point you want to record, start the second machine in record mode, making sure you can see it on the TV, and away you go. You can do a quickie edit by pausing the input machine if you spot things you want to exclude from the original film. You can even make it a little better by inputting music from a tape recorder, CD or whatever to the audio phono socket on the input machine. Takes a bit of practice but it can be done !

Saving to CD or DVD ? As VCR tape is on its way out you may wish to save your video to a CD or DVD. Apart from the fact that the equipment will be around for a little longer it is cheaper to send to someone by post (than a VCR tape) bearing in mind the additional cost these days of sending anything a smidgen over 5mm thick. I (and the recipient) have been caught by that one. Well, the easiest way is to have a combined VCR and DVD recorder. Over £200 still but probably getting cheaper. But it does mean that in the one machine you can play old VCR tapes, CDs of various kinds (including ones with JPG photos on) and record and play DVDs. One or two DVD players are no good for viewing JPG photos, so check.

Although there are a lot of confusing buttons to play with it is possible to record (either way) with one of these machines.
How is you TQ ? (Technology Quotient) see www.whatisyourtq.com I never mastered timed recording of VCRs on the same evening, never mind weekly copies of Corrie. Hopefully one of the new hard disk recorders will make this process less confusing.

Now, how about editing video on your PC. I have only recently ventured into this field and, although I go some software with my camera I find that Windows Movie Maker to be my cup of tea. It is FREE, came out with Service Pack 2 of Windows XP and there is a version in Windows Media Edition and, of course Vista (although I was surprised to learn that, in Vista they have dropped the ability to record from the older Analog video cameras or even from webcams - strange)

If you have XP you can download the program from Microsoft.

I am not about to describe the program here because it has been done already by Microsoft. But I will give you the links so you can look yourself.

Movie Maker.

Version 2.1 is a minor update, is included in Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 introduced a new version of Windows Movie Maker, 2.5, with more transitions and support for DVD burning.

In Windows Vista, Windows Movie Maker has been upgraded to version 6 to match the version number of the operating system, the SDK however refers to it as version 3.0. It is included in all editions with the exception of Windows Vista Starter. A High Definition (HD) version is included in Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista.

The Windows Vista version includes about 20 new effects, a few new transitions, and support for the DVR-MS file format which Windows Media Center records television in. The HD version in Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista adds support for capturing from HDV camcorders. The capture wizard will create DVR-MS type files from HDV tapes. However, the Windows Vista version of Windows Movie Maker no longer supports importing video from an analog video source such as a VCR or from a Web camera.[4]

All Windows Vista versions require pixel shader hardware support. Some systems might not be able to run the newer version. Therefore, Microsoft has also released an updated older version 2.6 for Windows Vista on the Microsoft Download Center. This version requires the Windows Vista version of Windows Movie Maker to be present, but allows the use of Windows Movie Maker on systems where the Windows Vista version cannot be run.

Some websites you might want to go to for Movie maker Help is are Movie Maker Forum and PapaJohn's WMM Website. Check out the external links at the bottom of the page for more links to helpful WMM websites.

Layout The layout consists of a storyboard view and a timeline view , collections for organizing imported video, and a preview screen. (this is common to most video editing programs). When in Storyboard view, the video project appears as a film strip showing each scene in clips. The storyboard/timeline consists of one 'Video' (with accompanying 'Audio' bar), one 'Music/Audio' bar, and one 'Titles/Credits' bar. In each bar, clips can be added for editing (e. g., a .wav music file will belong on the 'Music/Audio' bar). Still images can also be imported. The Video and Music/Audio bars can be "cut" to any number of short segments, which will play together seamlessly, but the individual segments are isolated editing-wise, so that for example, the music volume can be lowered for just a few seconds while someone is speaking.

Like all non-linear editing systems, the original camera file on the hard drive is not modified in any way; the current project is really just a list of instructions for re-recording a final output video file from the original file. Thus, several different versions of the same program can be simultaneously made from the original camera footage.

Importing footage. When importing footage into the program you can either choose to Capture Video (from camera, scanner or other device) or Import into Collections to import existing video files into your collections. The accepted formats for import are .WMV/.ASF, .MPG (MPEG-1), .AVI (DV-AVI), .WMA, .WAV, and .MP3. Additionally, the Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Movie Maker support importing MPEG-2 Program streams and DVR-MS formats. [5]

When importing from a DV tape, if the "Make Clips on Completion" option is selected, Windows Movie Maker automatically flags the commencement of each scene, so that the tape appears on the editing screen as a collection of short clips, rather than one long recording. That is, at each point where the "Record" button was pressed, a new "clip" is generated. However, the actual recording on the hard drive is still one continuous file. This feature is also offered after importing files already on the hard drive. In the Windows Vista version, the "Make clips on completion" option has been removed — the clips are now automatically created during the capture process.

After capture, any clip can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the timeline. Once on the timeline, clips can be duplicated or split, and any of the split sections deleted or moved to another position. Right-clicking any clip brings up the range of editing options.

Although it is possible to import digital video from cameras through the USB interface, most older cameras only support USB version 1 and the results tend to be poor — "sub VHS" — quality. Newer cameras using USB 2.0 give much better results. A FireWire interface camera will allow recording and playback of images identical in quality to the original recordings if the video is imported and subsequently saved as DV AVI files, although this consumes disk space at about 1 Gigabyte every five minutes (12GB/Hr). Alternatively, most DV cameras allow the final AVI file to be recorded back onto the camera tape (not many in the UK but one could record it on a VCR or CD/DVD) for high quality playback. Some standalone DVD recorders will also directly accept DV inputs from video cameras and computers.

Earlier versions of Windows Movie Maker did not allow the direct burning of DVDs. The project had to be first saved as an AVI file, and a separate program used to author the DVD from that. This was not a major problem, as limited but perfectly workable software for this (eg Power Producer) is often bundled with DVD burners.

The Windows Vista version of Windows Movie Maker provides integration with Windows DVD Maker to facilitate the recording of movies onto DVD.

Editing, effects and transitions There are over 130 effects, transitions, titles, and credits available. They are applied by using a drag and drop interface from the effects or transitions folders. Titles and credits can be added as stand alone titles or overlaying them on the clip by adding them onto the selected clip. Titles range from static (non-animated) titles to fly in, fading, news banner, or spinning newspaper animations. Due to the flexible interface, programming custom effects and other content is possible for version 2.0 and higher using XML. Microsoft also provides SDK documentation for custom effects and transitions.

Saving to The Internet Movie Maker lets Movie Editors save movies to their Hard Drive, or save to a CD or a DVD. With the feature of Saving to the Internet, Editors can publish their movie without any extra work.

Download the latest versions of Movie Maker

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

How to use Movie Maker

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/whatyouneed.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/camera.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/create/default.mspx

One point to note is that it is difficult to send videos to people as e-mail attachments. Most iSPs have limits as to the size of attachments and, by their nature any quality video will be too big. Better to snd it to them on a CD or DVD. If you think they don't have a DVD player attached to their TV it is possible to upload files to a site such as www.diino.com. The site is free and offers space up to 2Gb (more if you pay) That way you can point your friend at the place on your DIINO site and they can diownload it. There is an excellent Demo of Diino at And there is an excellent video at http://www.diino.com/democontent/demostart.html#Scene_1

PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDERS (PVRs) These are boxes which contain large hard disks to temporarily store off air video. They attach to any TV via the SCART plug and also contain a Freeview facility, though these someimes require a new outdoor aerial

Why get a PVR? One of the biggest selling points of these digital recorders is their user-friendliness; all of them have an in-built freeview programme guide, and you can just browse it and select things to record. Then go away and forget about it, and before you know it you'll have a backlog of shows to catch up on.
The ability to pause live programmes is useful too; no longer will you have to wait with a raging thirst for the ad break before you get a drink, nor deny calls of nature. Used properly, a PVR'll make your tv viewing fit around you, rather than vice-versa; you may find that you never watch shows when they're actually aired anymore. How much ? These days you can get a recon model that will record around 35 hours of video for around £45. For about £85 you can get one that will record around 160 hours.

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