Lonelygirl15

I am interested in the steps people are taking and software they are using when they want to reuse clips from the Creators' videos in their own fan videos.

The download button on lg15.com gives a .mov file from Revver.
It is also possible to go to the Revver site, view the source, and copy a .flv file.

Is there a good free program available for converting or capturing video from one of these formats into something Windows Movie Maker will accept? (my guess is I will find an .flv to .mpg or .avi method that will work, but I am hoping someone has some recommendations as to what is easy and works well).

I have free player software for both .mov and .flv that works on a PC, but need to find software that will convert to a format that will import into Windows Movie Maker (which came with my computer).

Windows Movie Maker supports these file types:

Audio files: .aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav, and .wma

Picture files: .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .wmf

Video files: .asf, .avi, .m1v, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, and .wmv


-----
For manipulating audio, I am using Audacity, as described in a separate thread http://www.lonelygirl15.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2534

(feel free to use this thread to comment more generally on the topic of video conversion for other software or for Macs, etc.)

Fastone Capture is the best I've found for capturing still clips and it is FREE.

We have never had any problem using still shots of LG-15 in our fan response vids or Avatars.

You can get the shots from the .mov file and you don't have to look for any other file extension.

You could go to tucows.com and type in video conversion software and either get free shareware or a limited trial on it. After the trial expires, simply pick another program and use it. If you want to purchase the software you like most, you can experiment and then buy one.

Camtasia Studio and Arcsoft VideoImpression work better to make vids, and they accomodate the .mov and .avi extensions.

This is all I can think of to tell you. Others may have more information to add.

You should find out what Terryfic used for those lonelygirl15recaps videos. It works real well, but i don't know what package he used.

...that'll give you hundreds and thousands of megabytes of uncompressed source video. (The software I use accepts uncompressed AVI better than revver's weird MOV.)

I usually edit audio directly with the video, but if I did it externally, I'd probably use Magix music maker.

After editing, I export back as uncompressed AVI, leading to more hundreds and thousands of megabytes that'll be useless in a minute, and then...

...I finally compile the final video with Riva FLV Encoder to 480x360, 30 fps Flash Video. Bitrate varies, I used 360 for my OpAphid Special Eds, but 1000 for the LG15 Opening Credits (see a few threads down if you haven't seen it yet).
Then upload to YouTube, then click refresh 250 times until it's finally live. And try to get all those gigabytes back the source video stole you.

you know what...I've never ahd a problem using mov files in movie maker...when i read that i was...shocked.

I've never tried MovieMaker, so Kelly may have a point. I don't know!

I try not to use Movie Maker because

1. It's Microsoft
2. It's primitive
3. It's limited

Unfortunaly, that means I have to bear with stupid "this file does not seem to contain media data" error messages and decompile the source vids before being able to use them. Hooray for bad codec implementation. -_-
But that was the purpose of this thread, wasn't it? Collecting the different methods used by different people?

Thanks for all the replies so far.

Killthesmiley wrote:you know what...I've never ahd a problem using mov files in movie maker...when i read that i was...shocked.

Perhaps you are talking about a different program?
I cannot import .mov files into "Windows Movie Maker" 2.1.4026.0 on a PC.

Are you working on a MAC perhaps?
.mov is usually associated with Quicktime.

milowent wrote:You should find out what Terryfic used for those lonelygirl15recaps videos. It works real well, but i don't know what package he used.

Thanks, I sent a PM to Terryfic asking about the methods used for the recap vids.

Perhaps you are talking about a different program?
I cannot import .mov files into "Windows Movie Maker" 2.1.4026.0 on a PC.

Are you working on a MAC perhaps?
.mov is usually associated with Quicktime.

No I use Windows Movie Maker, stardard XP Business version. I hate it...but well, i'm used to it, and can do some pretty neat stuff with it and photoshop combined.

Killthesmiley wrote:

Perhaps you are talking about a different program?
I cannot import .mov files into "Windows Movie Maker" 2.1.4026.0 on a PC.

Are you working on a MAC perhaps?
.mov is usually associated with Quicktime.

No I use Windows Movie Maker, stardard XP Business version. I hate it...but well, i'm used to it, and can do some pretty neat stuff with it and photoshop combined.

I'm still confused about this. I did some searching online for a difference between the Windows XP Home and Windows XP Pro editions of Windows Movie Maker, and could find no reference to the latter importing .mov files. (Maybe this something Microsoft decided to support, but doesn't like to mention?)

Here is one reference:
"Files Supported by Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308464

A tool with good features that did not work for me:
I did find a set of conversion tools called "RAD Video Tools" but they gave an error trying to read the Audio track from one of the LG15 downloaded .mov files, and then failed to perform the video conversion to .avi no matter which codec I chose from a list (either you get nothing, or just 1 frame). This tool uses files from your Quicktime installation, and I am using the free download, not Quicktime pro, so maybe that is a factor. I totally uninstalled and reinstalled Quicktime, with no change. This tool has some nice features if it would only work.
http://www.radgametools.com/smkdown.htm
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/win.html

A tool that worked for me, but I am still not thrilled with:
I downloaded another "freeware" conversion program that gave a working result "A-Z AVI DivX XviD Converter" http://www.bestsoftware4download.com/so ... ftpsb.html ... the quality is not as good as I would like, and it only converted the video with no audio (which is okay for my immediate purpose, and could be worked around by recording the audio in Audacity, saving as a .wmv, and adding the audio back in within Windows Movie Maker). The settings that worked were: Codec = Microsoft Video 1, Frame Rate = 25 Hz or 30 Hz, Audio = Windows Media Audio V2. (A Codec setting of Microsoft RLE also worked, but it takes longer and looks bad). It is also possible to set the output file size, so I tried doubling the width and height of each frame (from 480 x 360, doubled to 960 x 720) to improve the quality (it helps some, I think). I was able to drop the resulting .avi file into Windows Movie Maker, add .wav audio, and create a movie, so this is a working method, at least.

File sizes: An 8M .mov file converted to an 81M .avi file (at 25 Hz with dimensions 960x720) and then together with a 10M audio .wav file, generated a 14M .wmv movie with dimensions 640x480 using the "Large High Quality 30FPS" setting in Windows Movie Maker.


I would still be happy to hear about other tools/methods that people have found work well. I also might try converting .flv to .avi (rather than starting with the .mov files), because I suspect that that the .mov files may be lower quality to start with. In Quicktime, the .mov files audio is identified as MPEG-4, so maybe that format is not well supported by other utilities (?)

Here is a great, affordable, video editing software I found. And it has a 30 day free trial.

http://www.ulead.com/vs/runme.htm

@QtheC:

1. If you're as far as wanting to convert instead of importing directly, why not use mencoder, like me? It converts almost everything to almost everything, and it's free. The settings I posted above (which lack a space after .exe, btw) will decompile the video to uncompressed audio and video, but if you care about space, you can just as well instruct mencoder to re-encode it to compressed .avi or something. I just choose to live with the uncompressed files because compressing a compressed video, only to compress it again after editing, seriously hurts the quality.
2. H.264/MPEG-4 (the codec/container standard used by Quicktime) is one of the best and latest codecs out there...DivX, XviD and the likes are all MPEG-4 codecs or re-implementations. I never looked at Revver's Flash Video files, but chances are the Quicktime files are much better quality. Wikipedia says older FLV uses H.263 (as the wiki page on H.263 puts it: "As H.264 provides a significant improvement in capability beyond H.263, the H.263 standard is now considered primarily a legacy design (although this is a recent development)."), and TrueMotion VP6 from Flash Player 8 onwards. The content on that page is only a line longer than the bottom template, and most of it is codec history - do I have to say more? It's obscure, to say the least. But don't believe me - believe yourself. Just actively look at any YouTube video, and you'll see that FLV is horribly "blocky", only varying in degree (one of the reasons I turned the bitrate up in the last vid...360 was unwatchable). Quicktime isn't perfect, either, especially not in these sizes, but it's definitely a better codec than flash video.

(The attentive reader will now ask "then why do you export to FLV in the end?". The answer is simple: YouTube broadcasts FLV. So I have the choice to either encode as AVI, and have the already re-compressed AVI re-compressed another time by YouTube into FLV, or I can just make the FLV myself, at least making sure it's watchable.)

I have not tried the solution steps Renegade suggests for comparison, but I did find a freeware tool that worked very well for converting one of the lg15 video files from .flv to .avi

I found freeware "Internet Video Converter 1.40" listed here:
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/gmm/f ... nvert.html

Here are the notes from the installation:

IVC - Internet Video Converter is a frontend GUI using open source projects such as
MPlayer, MPUI, Mencoder, FFmpeg & FLVtool2 for video conversion between major video formats
(Flash FLV, SWF, VCD, SVCD, DVD, DV, Mpeg, Divx, Xvid, AVI, Quicktime, WMV, H.264, iPod, PSP, 3GP mobile phone etc.).

I used the FFmpeg (rather than the Mencoder) selection to convert a 12Meg .flv file to a 25Meg .avi file ... it performed the conversion in just a few minutes, the result looks very good (almost as good as the original .flv or .mov files you get from revver), and the audio was converted along with the video.

I think this solution may be compatible (just provides an interface wrapper) to the Mencoder that Renegade mentions. This interface wrapper is not great looking, but it was not hard to use and gave a good result for the one conversion I tried.

EDIT: I tried the Mencoder option rather than the FFmpeg option (there are two choices for encoding engine), and it worked just as well, creating a slightly smaller file.

I should add that the conversion I choose was to a .avi file of type mpeg4v2 + mp3. (There are several other .avi options you can try).

This one will help without downloading software!

• Download the .mov file from Revver.
• Go to http://www.Zamzar.com
• Fill out the form.
• Click convert and go!

its completely free, it just takes a short wile for it to be e-mailed to you.

P.S. If you are trying to download a video from YouTube, go to Ripzor.com and click on YouTube Ripper:]

Certainly looking interesting, but what parameters are they using for conversion?