What's Possible with your Home Movies

Today I'm going to start off by providing an example of what's possible when you edit your home movies, or videos. Most of my videos are of family and I'm a little reluctant to be posting them on the open internet. Too many perverts lurking around, and others looking to use things in a malicious way. I do have some footage that I shot about 4 yrs ago now, in December 2007.

This example is of the ice and snow we received back then. The video is composed of video and photos, along with some background music. The video was shot on my old Sony DCR-TRV 120 digital-8 camcorder, which records to tape in the DV format. Photographs used were shot on my Kodak EasyShare P880 digital camera. These raw materials were transferred to my PC and edited together using Ulead MediaStudio Pro 8, a product now discontinued by Corel. You see Corel bought out Ulead, and then proceeded to dump all of Ulead's really great products, like MediaStudio Pro, DVD Workshop, GIF 5, and now PhotoImpact. Anyway back to producing the video. The soundtrack is from Smartsound.com, Quicktracks. using their editor SonicFire Pro. These are all tools that are used when producing a video.

Kansas Ice and Snow

 

 That's a small example that about any video footage can be made into something viewable. Later I will start into a series of tutorials on how to edit your videos.

 

Photos and Video-Slideshows

One item commonly used in video, are photos. They are mixed in with home movies, or presented themselves as a slideshow. This is a means of sharing them. Most of your video and photo programs utilize this term when you finish editing, and are now ready to produce a finished product.

Not too long ago the digital camera was not around, we had film cameras. We took our exposed film, called a negative to a store to have the film developed. After a few days our prints (photos) were in hand. We would then eagerly show them to whoever would take the time to look. It was also common to have copies made so you could give them to family and friends. Then along came personal computers or now known as a PC (wonder how they came up with that one). A short time later, printers were introduced and finally a scanner. With the scanner we had a way to get those printed photos into our computers. Now we could make our own copies, and print the copies for our family and friends. With the PC technology developing at an alarming rate, we soon could do other things with those scanned in photos, like put them on a CD, or send them in an email.

At the same time software was developed that allowed us to not just have our photos displayed statically, but we could animate the presentation. The photos could gently transition from one to the next, and also zoom in and out, as well as pan from side to side. This effect was created by Ken Burns and is know in the photography world as the Ken Burns Effect. Well what's happening when we're creating these presentations is the program makes a video from our photos. A video is moving pictures. Moving pictures is a phrase that was used years ago when referring to movies that you would go watch in a theater. Now we had the ability to make moving pictures, that look almost as good as those produced years ago by Hollywood.

Shortly after the scanner was introduced, the digital camera came about. The digital camera slowly replaced the old trusted film camera. The digital camera had some real strong selling points:

• You could see the results immediately. If you messed up that shot, you could delete it and try again.
• You did not need film. The photo was recorded on some form of digital storage media
• You could make as many copies as you wanted AND each copy was as good as the original.

Now we have some very good digital cameras, in fact it's getting very difficult to find the old 35mm film cameras. We download the photos into our PCs to be edited and then shared. I kinda skipped over the edited aspect of photos until now. We were able to do this with our scanned photos too. To do this you need to have a photo-editing program. There are numerous ones available now, and the cost ranges from prohibitive for a home-hobbyist to free. The professional photographers will most likely choose the program that has become the industry standard, while most of us try to find the least expensive if we're going to buy one, if not a free program. Choose what works best for your camera, computer and most importantly your budget. It makes no sense to spend $1,000 or more on a program if you only have a point-shoot type camera, and are only taking photos of family during the holidays or on vacations.

On a quick side note here, that ties in to obtaining software. One way that I have found to do this, through a process called beta-testing. Software developers will utilize people, like you and me, to test their next version of programs. You're provided the beta versions to use and find the bugs, (problems) and report that back to them. Beta-testers must agree not to divulge any information to the public during this process. Doing so can cause current sells to drop, and can help the competition. At the end of the testing, when the program is ready to be released to the public, most of them will give you free of charge that full version. I've alpha and beta tested for Corel for the last 5 or 6 years. Of course I do use their products, hey they're free to me. I've also managed their digital media help forum, Corel User to User Web Board for some time. This is done strictly on a volunteer basis, on my time. So they have also dropped me some programs free. Simply put, would you use a $500 program if it were given to you free? Thought so..

I've tried numerous programs, both free and trials. That's the great thing about software and the internet. Companies now commonly provide you with the ability to try out their products before you decide if you want to buy it. Just find one that is easy and works for you. Once you do then learn how to share good quality photos in the many different ways available to us now. Currently we have CD, DVD, BD (blu-ray), internet sites like Facebook, Flicker, Photobucket, and mobile applications, ipod, blackberry and cellphones, oops almost forgot, you can still print them out.  

DVDs..Data or Video

I left off talking about storing or archiving your video. With SD(Standard-Definition) you have the choice of Data Discs or Video Discs. First I'll discuss Data Discs.
A Data Disc is nothing more than your files, of any kind being copied to a different storage medium. So if you done nothing more than burn your video files to a DVD you could have a wide variety of video files, along with about any other file type, on the same disc. These are commonly referred to as back-up discs. If you open a data DVD up using windows explorer, it would look something like this;

Data DVD with Video Files

 If you look at the right side, you see some files with the file extension AVI. These are video files, that were captured to a computer for editing. In the left pane, there's other folders that contain numerous other file types. The DVD was used just as back-up media. You can not play this in your stand-alone DVD player, to view the videos on your TV. You could however, put this disc in the DVD drive on your computer, and play the video files using a software DVD player. Let's now look at a Video DVD.

A Video DVD must have a specific file and folder structure. The root-layer of the disc, must have at least a folder called VIDEO_TS, and might have AUDIO_TS folder, however the latter is no longer required, and most of the time now is empty. Below is a screenshot of a video DVD.

Most all files on a Video DVD are contained in the VIDEO_TS folder.

There are International DVD Specifications, that set out just how a video DVD must be structured. The group which is responsible for setting the standards is known as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO 9690is published by the ISO lays out the standards for optical disc media, such as video DVD.


Here's a look at the inside of the of a VIDEO_TS folder;

Files inside a VIDEO_TS folder

In the screenshot you see 3 types of files, VOB, IFO, BUP. The folder must contain all of these files so that it can play on your stand-alone DVD player. The VOB files are video files, with some additional data. It is possible to copy VOB files from a video DVD to your computer, rename the file extension to mpg and play them with a software video player, such as Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, or VLC. Notice I emphasized mpg, as in MPEG-2. No other video file extension will work, because the video files must be MPEG-2 format. 


Video DVD Files
Video DVD must contain VOB, IFO and BUP files in order to be played. I touched on the VOB file above, mentioning that it was a video file, and the format type must be MPEG-2. 
VOB stands for Video Object, and can contain, video, audio, subtitle, menu, and navigation contents, mixed together in stream form. On a DVD all the content for one title set (a video clip) is contiguous, but broken up into 1-GB VOB files for the convenience of various computer operating systems. Each VOB file must be 1GB or less.
IFO files are info files and contain all the information that a DVD player needs to know about the disc so a user can navigate and play the disc properly. This would include the menus, the chapters, and where subtitles are supposed to start.,

BUP files are back-ups of the IFO files, should corruption occur. 

Video Camcorders and Cameras

It used to be that you used a camcorder to take video, a camera to take photos, and a cellphone to make phone calls. That has changed so much lately, that both are taking the back seat to cellphones. Cellphones are now capable of doing just about anything you can thing of. Need to call someone, use your cellphone. Want a quick video of that newborn for the grandparents, use your cellphone, or just a quick pic, use your cellphone.

Technology has evolved so much and so very fast. When they first introduced a cellphone that had built in camera, the photos were not really that good. However now, well the photos far exceed the mega-pixel (mp) of my first digital camera. In fact one of my more expensive digital cameras, a Sony FD-95, could not produce the same quality of pictures as the cellphones my wife and I currently use. That FD-95 when released brand new, would set you back around $1,000. Our cellphones cost barely more than $100.

Now when it comes to digital still cameras, and digital camcorders, both will do the other's job. Cameras not only take photographs, but can record video. Camcorders not only take video, but can take still photos. There's generally a trade-off with them. With a camera, the photos are generally very high resolution, but the videos not so much. The same with camcorders. The video is high-quality, but the photos are not. I think this type of style was just used more for marketing whichever product you had to sell. Each wanted to grab the other's market, so they offered an additional feature to facilitate it.

So what do you when you want to purchase one of them? Well, you need to consider what type of medium, media your end result will be used for. The media refers to where you're wanting to store, produce or share to. There's a lot of variables to consider for this. To store your videos for example, you want something that can record a good quality, but yet not have a large file size. Video requires a lot of storage space, to keep the original quality with some formats.

Storage for video can be in the form of external hard-drives, and DVDs. If you choose the latter, you need to decide on if you are going to just store the video files as data, or you want to produce a video DVD. They are quite different.

Anyway I'll discuss more about this a little later...

Video Editing

Have you tried to edit video? Not the videos from DVDs you rent, or recorded off your TV using a Tivo, or any PVR. Not ones that you swipe from hosting sites like YouTube or Veoh, but your own home made videos. Ones that you shot with your camcorder? Fun isn't it.

Home videos and camcorders have progressed a long way since they were first started way back with the old 8mm film cameras. I think the first big splash into editing video was when the camcorders came along. This was also the start of the video format wars. Sony Betamax was immediately followed by VHS. No one really knew which was better, or which would survive.

I made a wrong choice back then, choosing Betamax. The quality of video produced by the camcorder seemed way better than those produced by VHS camcorders. The tapes were smaller too. However as we now know, Sony lost, and it wasn't long after that you could no longer find any betamax tapes to record with.

So onward and upward with the VHS, and recording your family events to keep and view when you grew old. Wrong.... Sony, JVC, and others just can not stand for you not having to spend more money. So the next in line was Digital media...

Digital media of course involves more than just the video recorders. In fact the storage devices needed to be developed first. Devices such as hard drives that could hold more data, yet be much smaller. Tapes that would record the data in the same format that is used to transfer to other devices such as your computers, and then storage media that could hold more than what a CD provides, ie; DVDs.

Well they finally came up with a real smart way for people, like you and I, to take very good quality videos. It started out as Hi-8, which is analog, and soon progressed to Digital-8 and mini-DV. This was and in my opinion still the very best format, bar none!!!

DV (digital video) is easier to edit, is considered the most loss-less file format, providing you with about the best quality around, with the least amount of hassle. Since DV, things still changed. I guess people just can't be satisfied can we. Dumbiest thing we've done yet, is think that we need to be able to record the same high-definition video as Hollywood. However we should not be forced to pay over $100,000.00 to do it.

Well, (the consumer) cried out, demanded this, and we got it. After all we have the cash to blow don't we. They gave us HD this, HD that, everything must be HD now. Heck, the old free TV over the airwaves becomes extinct in a matter of days. Why?? HD and digital that's why. Sit down and put a pencil to just how much it will cost in the end, to change completely over to HD/Digital. Let's see.... oh yes we're talking about camcorders, so you need a new HD camcorder, a new powerhouse PC to edit those home videos on, DVD oops scratch that, we've jumped over the DVD, as it can only handle SD (Standard Definition), now we need one of those Blu-Ray burners to put the video on, and a Blu-Ray player to play them on our new HD (LCD or Plasma) TVs.

Ok I'm going to cut right to the point now. My main reason for this post. This new HD/Blu-Ray stuff may be nice and pretty. However the codecs used in these are the most difficult in the world to edit and do anything with. I'm talking about the AVCHD. Most of the expensive programs let alone the cheap ones, can not deal with it, with any sort of stability. You need a real powerhouse PC to attempt to edit it. The new quad-cores still aren't enough. Oh they can do it, but I'll bet they struggle just the same. The programs just are not written to take full advantage of multi-core processors, and I doubt that the operating systems are up to speed as well.

So anyway, I don't blame the hardware or software manufacturers for this. It's those idiots like us, that think we can and should be able to do this. The manufacturers responded to us, because they knew we would throw our money their way, for whatever they said would work. They continue to promise us everything, but not really deliver. We complain about the almost non-existence of Tech support. Why should we be surprised by this. They know that this HD stuff is for the birds. They are aware that these formats are not meant to be edited, they are for the finished product of a more editable format like DV.

I say you got what you asked for, and what you deserved!! All the headaches, and frustrations that you wanted, and then some. Don't cry to some tech support that my PC crashes when I try to do this with my video. It takes hours and hours, and days to render. Well what the heck did you expect? Take a piece of aluminum foil wad it up into a very small ball. Now I want you to unwrap that wadded up piece of aluminum foil, and get it just the way it was before you wadded it up. That's compression and decompression, in other words a CO DEC, that is used for this HD stuff...

Have fun....

Digital Media the How to...

Digital Media, video and photography. I'm mainly a home-hobbyist, but have gained a lot of experience and knowledge over the past 5 or 6 years. Most of this I attribute to what has almost become an addiction to providing help on Corel User to User Web Board. So I've decided to share some of the knowledge that I've gained. How to..is a recurring question when it comes to video, and photography. I hope that I'll be able to provide some sensible answers to them.

When talking about videos, I don't just mean videos that you purchase or rent to view. I mean the actual art, science and process of producing them. Not that I don't watch movies or videos, I do watch some, however anymore I find my self paying more attention to how the movie or video is being produced.

While watching them, I'm asking myself questions (not aloud, wife would think I'm nuts), like how did they compose that shot, or what effects are being used? Is this something that I could reproduce?

Yep, videography, editing and producing videos is hobby of mine. I'd love to make it my occupation, yet I fear in doing so will take the fun out of it. As an occupation you're faced with deadlines, trying to please the clients. I think this will have an adverse affect on creativity. So for now, I'll just be satisfied to leave it as one of my hobbies..