Need help with importing video clip from digital camera...

t4uecker wrote on 6/20/2003, 2:26 PM

hi there-

i'm having problems importing short video clips from my digital camera into vegas 4.0. i'm sure it's a simple issue, but would really appreciate the help.

i've taken several photos and short video clips with my digital camera (it does 360x240, 15fps video). i'd like to make a video project out of these. i can import the photos just fine into the vegas timeline. but when i try to import the video clips, it seems to import the audio but not the video. if i select one of the video clips in the explorer view, it says underneath "Video: Stream attributes could not be determined". Under that, it says "Audio: 11,024 Hz, 8 Bit, Mono, 00:00:21:27, Uncompressed". On the right side in the preview window, it says "Preview: 360x240x32, 29.97p" (but there's no video showing).

i seem to be able to view the video clips just fine using windows media player.

the file properties box in vegas explorer says the filename is "MVI_0237.AVI" and the "Type:" is "Video for Windows" and the "Size:" is 5.27MB. The Attributes says "Archive". Also, the Streams lists the Audio stream but no video stream. The Software is listed as CanonMVI01. The Plug-In is listed as "aviplug.dll".

am i doing something wrong? thx,

jk

Comments

FuTz wrote on 6/20/2003, 3:07 PM

... another of us with a Canon cam (Powershot I presume?). The problem: these cameras save video as "MotionJPG" and they don't give the codec with the camera software (a**h*les... I wrote to Canon about that...it would be so easy for them to provide this codec with the software) Anyway...camera is more than good so I'll shut up now...

If you run Win XP, open your files in WinMovieMaker then render (save) those in AVI. You should then be able to open those rendered files in Vegas.
If you run Win 2K/98/95/3.1 you'll have to get a third party codec. You can find a good one for $30 at www.morgan.com
Note: you can try it for a month before actually buying it.
There's another codec that you can find at www.mainconcept.com that will do the same job.
Free solution I used before switching to WinXP: I downloaded CamStudio at http://www.rendersoftware.com It's an application that allows you to record directly what's on your screen and save it as an AVI file. You can even crop the framing you want. So you just run your files in QTime while recording the screen (maybe run QT wide-opened to get the maximum quality?)...

Have a good time, these files are very interesting to look at !

t4uecker wrote on 6/20/2003, 11:27 PM

thanks very much! you're right, i have a canon powershot s400. i haven't tried your suggestion(s) yet, but they make sense and i'm sure they'll work. a couple of other questions:

1. what's the best way to incorporate these still images in a project with DV from a (miniDV) camcorder? i guess i'm wondering because the resolution for a DV project (720x???) is quite a bit higher than the 320x240 that the digital camera uses. and i wouldn't think i'd want the digital camera clip to be full frame size because the resolution would be much lower than the camcorder footage.

2. any suggestion about the best project setting to use if i just have still images and these video clips from the still camera? just want the output to be a video file that others can play on their computer (probably just an avi file or something like that). again, same issue with digicam video clip resolution because it's going to be much lower than for the still images.

thx again!

jk

farss wrote on 6/21/2003, 2:55 AM

You can drop just about anything into the VV timeline including stills at low res, I'll admit at that res they're not going to look too flash or you can use pan and crop to keep them at native res, they wont fill the screen but they will probably look better that way.

You need to keep your project at either PAL or NTSC res if your going back to tape, no choice there.

Same thing with your 15fps video, VV will let you put it on a 25 or 30 fps timeline, it'll take a while to render while it converts the framerate and rescales the frames themselves.

With your stills you could use photoshop to convert them to video frame size but I haven't noticed any improvement using Photoshop to do it versus VV unless you want to do some more manipulation in PS to try to improve the look of them.

When I've used lo res still I've kept them small in the frame and had them moving or have more than one of them on the screen at a time, no one notices the lask of resolution then!

mikkie wrote on 6/21/2003, 7:16 AM

"With your stills you could use photoshop to convert them to video frame size but I haven't noticed any improvement using Photoshop to do it versus VV unless you want to do some more manipulation in PS to try to improve the look of them."

*Might* be an improvement in P/Shop using the image doctor plugin before or after enlarging... One of the functions works with the blockiness of a lower quality/rez jpeg, and can in some cases make a difference.