Comments on: Anyone Know Anything About Video Editing?

By: Carter Coland

Carter Coland — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:40:54 +0000

Great read, you make some really thought provoking points. Bookmarking to read more for sure! Have a nice night.

By: bluetea

bluetea — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:03:00 +0000

http://www.sz.ah163.com

By: PR4God

PR4God — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:26:00 +0000

A quick correction to what I said a few entries earlier. Movie Edit Pro, version 12, is the version that handles TOD files renamed to MPG’s without re-encoding them. Version 11 has less bugs but will NOT handle the renamed TOD’s!

By: Eirik

Eirik — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:35:00 +0000

And by the way. You should convert into something like DV or Motion JPEG for editing. H.264 is not a video format designed for editing. It’s an end delivery format based on keyframes.

Convert to a high quality I-frame only format and then export your finished work to H.264, Flash or whatever.

By: Eirik

Eirik — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:27:00 +0000

You might find something here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=316036

In addition to this I can recommend VisualHUB. It has been able to convert everything I have given it:
http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/

Including the DVR-MS files from my Windows Media Center.

By: PR4God

PR4God — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:55:00 +0000

Hey everyone. I stumbled across this post and I own the HD7. There is only one program that I have that works – Movie Edit Pro by Magix ($50). Drag n drop from camera’s hard drive to computer, rename from TOD to MPG and then drag n drop onto timeline of program. That’s it! No conversion of file either, uses original file! Program isn’t bad either. It’s no Final Cut Pro or even Express, but has lots of effects and detailed editing. I’ve had 5 of their programs, get version 11 if you can, 12 has too many bugs. Hope this helps!

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:35:00 +0000

We have a couple of those HD7 cameras. Good, small, low cost HD camera (compared to our Panasonic P2 cameras). Not the best for low-light, but it is to be expected with such a small lens.

We do a lot of outdoor stuff (mainly trains and Punkin Chunkin) so the HD7 is nice to put on a tripod and leave in a "risky" situation (like next to the train tracks or under a chunker).

We use PCs and even with the software they supply it is still a pain to convert the files. The "Power Director" software converts those .TOD files to .mpg files (just renaming doesn't work).

The .mpg files are really compressed and are a drag to edit. Most of the time we batch convert the .mpg files to SD DV files for editing to speed up the process. We usually output standard DVDs, but if we need to output HD we swap out the proxy files with the original .mpgs and re-render.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 04:08:00 +0000

First mistake: listening to anything Steve Gillmor says, learn to nod and ignore, doing exact opposite. Second mistake: attempting to do any serious editing with iMovieHD -- Avid and FCS2 are out, in all their glory, go use them. Thirdly, you are dealing with M2T files, not the TOD/MOD. Can't you just change the TOD extension to M2T and import that way, or your NLEs not supporting M2T, FCP6 not doing M2T? Sometimes it sucks to be Mac, locked into Apple Quicktime hack-up jobs, as Avid/Liquid, Ulead, Canopus, Vegas, and others support M2T direct on the timeline. TOD to M2T and then Streamclipping, no work? Tapeless on Mac, oh boy.

Hard-drive-based consumer cameras, are a mixed bag even in their best state, always hoop jumping and transcoding hell. Tons of fairly cheap prosumer HD MiniDV cameras out there, go return the JVC and get one. The ffmpeg route is a seriously bad practice, not to mention incredibly time-consuming.

I wish editing video wasn't so hard."

It's actually not, no worries, you are just a novice and you got some real bad advice, right out the gate. You got a point and shooter, with proprietary wrapper problems, as others have said, go back and get a REAL MiniDV 3 chipper. Or find a Mac NLE that supports HDV material as a .M2T file set.

By: Fazal Majid

Fazal Majid — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 10:09:00 +0000

If you can still return it, do so, and get the Canon HV20 instead. It is a standard HDV camcorder, so it will work with iMovie HD, and it has video quality superior to $5000 pro cameras.

By: Roger Doger

Roger Doger — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:04:00 +0000

Return that junk- no workie w/ MAC