S2 Movies are too nice!

[GrayMatter]

I thought that might get you to read this thread!

I purchased my S2 yesterday at Circuit City. I just couldn't hold out until this site reviews the camera, and if nothing else, I'm prepared to pay the restocking fee at Circuit City. Anyway, this camera is definitely a camera to grow into. The first issue I've run into is that the video this camera takes is too nice.

Too nice for my purposes that is. I've got a 1 GB SD card. When I take pictures, I use the highest settings possible because I know I can always resize or crop them to what I want. The AVI movies this camera makes are high quality and I want to shoot them with the best I have available, but later I'd like to be able to chop them down for email clips, or the occasional link on a website, dare I even dream of a streaming file? A 1GB video on the highest setting gives between 7 and 9 minutes of video. That might be OK if I want to compile about 30 minutes on a DVD to send back home. Until then I need options on how to edit the videos.

I am open to changing the file format, resolution, framerate, etc... as long as I end up with something that looks good on a computer. What I'd rather not do, is use specialized codecs or tools that create files you can't watch without proprietary software. That would defeat the point considering the people I want to see the clips are barely computer literate. I dont need fancy transitions, special effects, and all the rest, but I would like ease of use. Any suggestions?

[Akysten]

I find that WMV format works great...
Windows Movie Maker will do this for you if you have XP. As long as the user is running a more recent windows or mac OS, it should be file. I've had no one have trouble.. even the in-laws...

As a comparison.. I have compressed a 5 minute video in high quality to 19mb using wmv, and it looks better than an Mpeg file that's 10 time larger.

An option through WMM for e-mail that my wife uses, it sized the file to 1mb and attaches it for you..... it's OK.. but I prefer to adjust the quality myself.
I use the "fit to size" option, you will see the size of the video and the bit rate.. and the estimated size. I would prefer to customize this more, but I get suprising results from 640x480 w/700-800 bit rate.. as you drop in size, you'll see the resolution drop, from DV, to 640x480(all you need with the s2), to 320x200, to even lower.. you'll see the bit rate drop as you go.

I can provide some links to video if you're interested.

[GrayMatter]

Thanks for turning me onto Windows Movie Maker, it's not a tool that I had ever really noticed before. I'm playing with it as we speak. If it's not too much trouble, I wonder if you could post a small walkthrough on how you got your 5 minute clip down to 20MB. And any links to videos you've made would also be great. Thanks for your help.

[Akysten]

The only think i have online right now is some video from my Canon A70 taken about a year ago.
It's a good example of what you can do with Windows Movie maker.
While programs like Pinnacle are more powerful, if find this one easier to use.. plus I like the WMV format...

http://santoonie.com/videos/mbikeadv4.wmv

it's 9.5MB...and 1 minute 47 seconds... Remember, it was done on an A70 at 320x200x15fps... so don't judge the compression.


When you choose to "save to my computer" from the options on the left.. choose the option to fit to <fill in number> mb... Try several numbers, and keep an eye on the bit rate and resolution. With the s2, going over 640x480 is not necessary. You can experiement to see how small you can get the file with decent resolution.... the smaller you go, the more "blotchy" the video gets. You would be surprised at how good you can get it to look...

I have some small sampled from the s1 that I could e-mail you...

[GrayMatter]

After some experimentation with Windows Movie Maker it appears to be a fine tool for shrinking these videos for now. I've also taken to shooting movies on the camera at 320x240 at 30fps because they still look excellent, are closer to a size I might email, and give me that much more time to shoot on the camera if something longer than 8 minutes merrits it.

Just for reference I find that I can compress about 2 to 2 1/2 minutes of 640x480 30 fps into a great looking file about 10 to 12 MB in size. Therefore I should be able to take the full 8 minute clips at the highest settings and get it down to under 40MB which is much more reasonable when trying to send to friends and family.

I doubt I'll be buying a digital camcorder anytime soon with this bad boy handy. However, I wonder if anyone has a suggestion on how to take the huge and high quality AVI's this camera makes, edit them, and burn it to a DVD?

[ajay67]

the review says the camera comes with an excellent software for photo & movie editing. can't you use it to burn to dvd?