Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 04-01-2006
Tags: photo, photography, software, tools, video, video camera viewing software, web2.0
A look at what is currently available on eBay
Which website offers the highest quality video viewing for uploads of short AVI clips to share...?
...with friends and family?
My new point-and-shoot Canon camera also records movies that are of decent quality on my PC screen. But no matter what format I save them in, they end up very grainy after uploading to Google Video, that is, details are only visible if you shrink the Google viewing window down to <1.5". FYI, I have used VirtualDub to edit and am not sure which format to save in (I don't understand how an AVI file with a single edit can sometimes end up 10x bigger than the source file) and which freeware is best for editing audio. While Windows Moviemaker allows audio editing, it constantly crashes so I've given up. Also FYI, I am not interested in buying professional movie editing software for the few occasions per year that I will actually record videos.
If you save something as AVI, it doesn't say anything about the video-format that is used for coding the video. There are a couple of video-formats out there, like MPEG2 (the DVD-format), MPEG4 (used e.g. for the iPod) or motion JPEG (used by many digital cameras).
The link I provided as source is a page of the technical help center of Google Video. There a list of supported and recommended video-formats and other settings that should help to increase the quality of uploaded videos can be seen. Here is the recommendation-list:
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Quality Recommendations:
If possible, we suggest uploading the original source file. However, we recommend the specifications below for maximum quality and reasonable file size:
- MPEG4 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 2 mbps
- MPEG2 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 5 mbps
- 30 frames per second
- 640x480 resolution
- 4:3 frame
- de-interlace
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In VirtualDub you should be able to set these settings when creating the video for the upload to Google Video.
That also the reason for your other question, why the size of the video increases dramatically after editing a small part. The video-format being used when saving is a different one than the one you originally had when you read it in. It's the same effect if you load in a JPG-graphic and then save it as BMP.
If you simply save a video I suppose that VirtualDub is using a format where no converting is necessary (the single pictures of the video are simply saved as they are). This is the fastest way but also the one with the biggest need of storage. In general this is something an editor of a video likes. Only right before the publishing of the video it is exported in the format that is needed for upload.