video editing rc movies

[tamiya monkey]

hi there im wanting to produce better movies for both me and site of my cars but not sure what software to use. im filming them on my camcorder then copying over to my dvd recorder and putting vob files over to pc. its at this point where im not sure what software or converters to use, i started using microsoft moviesmaker but does accept vob or dvd files can anyone help with tips or advice.

[Martin71RS(2)]

if your camcorder has a DV out, get a firewire card and download directly into your PC (into moviemaker even)

Martin

[mud4fun]

In fact most newer motherboards/PC's had firewire ports included with them. You can buy the firewire/DV cable from places like Curry's or PC World for about £10.

I'm using a DV camcorder and I download the tape straight onto my PC using that firewire cable. I then use Pinnacle Studio V9 to edit with.

However big WARNING!: To record at even the lower quality onto the hard drive will still use approx 2Gb for a one hour DV tape. That is your raw movie. You then edit it in the pinnacle software and produce a streaming version of your edited movie. I use Windows Media player format because it keeps the filesize quite small but still gives good quality. I prefer to create the streaming movie at the higher quality setting of 700kbps but normally have to resort to 350kbps. A typical 3 minute movie will come out at 10Mb. Once you've created the finished movie you can delete the raw files etc to give yourself some disk space back!

I ended up buying a couple of extra hard drives........

Mind you I'm new to this too, I only got my DV camera for xmas and my version of pinnacle studio is the freebie one included with the camera. It is OK but many of the features like slow motion are 'extra cost options'.

I've also noticed that the rendering of these movies in the editing software consumes vast amounts of processing power. This kept causing my PC to blue screen as it overheated. I'm running twin 2800 AMD processors, 3Gb RAM, 500Gb hard drive space, GeForce4 graphics and the PC case is a very large coolermaster aluminium one with 17 fans plus an oil cooler on the CPU - it has never overheated since being built 2 years ago until I came to run Pinnacle Studio!!!!!!. (I use this machine daily for my work and it manages to run a large ORACLE Database, SQL Server database plus both a java web server and a .NET environment)

The case/CPU is fitted with thermometers and the CPU temp jumped from 42 degree to 82 degrees after just 10 minutes of using the editing software........ Has anybody else experienced this???

I have also learnt to burn a platter image of the finished movie to disk first and then use that image to create DVD's later. If you choose to create and burn at the same time it can take ages and then fall over because of a disk fault leaving you to start all over again from scratch - very annoying!! Having the platter image stored on the hard drive also makes it a breeze to create multiple DVD copies at a later date.

[DJTheo]

It is normal that a CPU gets hotter at Video editing as it has for long times high usage, although not for the system you describe, which sounds like a server and should cope any load for any time.

quote:17 fans plus an oil cooler on the CPU

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What??? [?] What do you mean with oil cooler, could you please make a photo of the PC as I am very curious?

Thanks

[mud4fun]

Hi Theo,

I use CoolerMaster HHC001 heatsinks, I'm not sure if they are still available. They use a pair of heat pipes and are filled with oil which evaporates at the base then travels up the pipes drawing heat away from the CPU then cooling at the top to start all over again.

Mine have proved great coolers and the CPU generally stays around 40-50 degrees even under a heavy load of users on the server in a hot room with no A/C. They were pretty expensive at the time I bought mine a couple of years ago. I think the development in fan designs and coolers has meant they are more or less redundant now.

PS. The fans on these are 7500rpm units and I've used them on some of my R/C cars to cool the ESC's which they do very well!!

My server case is a coolermaster ATCS310:

http://www.coolermaster-europe.com/eng/pro...atc-310-sx1.asp

It is quite big, about the size of small filing cabinet!!

[Matt2000]

i use pinnacle studio for video editing. uses lots of space, but it's worth it!

[DJTheo]

Ok, now I understood what you mean, my little Shuttle barebone PC has also heatpipe cooling [8D]

But on your server case descritpion it writes 3 fans, not 17?[?]

Cheers

[mud4fun]

Theo, my case is a slightly older design and has the 300mm fan, 4 x 80mm fans and 2 x 120mm fans plus my motherboard and cards have 2 CPU fans, memory fans/heatsinks, graphics fans and motherboad chipset fans/heatsinks, disk coolers. My PSU also has 2 x 120mm fans......

I work from home and I don't have A/C installed, the home office gets very hot in the summer so I needed the extra cooling. It worked well until I started video editing!!!! - I still can't believe how much CPU usage video editing uses. I've run 250+ users off this same box running a web application over an ORACLE database and a typical 8 hour day live use still used less CPU time than an hour of movie editing and rendering..... [][]

I have now turned the fan speeds up and I have not had any crashes recently using pinnacle studio, I originally turned all the fan revs down because of the noise. []

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I like pinnacle studio, it is very user friendly, easy to use and produces what I believe to be good quality results. The sound tracks and title editing is also a breeze.[8D]

As I say, I'm still new to all this and learning but I have tried a few other movie making tools and pinnacle is the best I've used to date although I'm sure somebody like Wireless can suggest better? he is after all a genius when it comes to movies.[8D]

I was also surprised at how good the compression is on WMV files. I started out thinking that the MPEG format was better but now I am producing movies to use on TC hosting I need them small. The WMV format allows for a good quality/size ratio.

[mud4fun]

Oh Tamiya Monkey, another few things I've learnt recently are:

1) Many DV cameras have camera shake compensation, however, it appears it reduces the quality of the final movie significantly (it does on my Canon MV730i) so keep the camera really still and you'll get a better quality picture. I have also used a tripod for doing slow moving close up action and the quality is superb.

2) Try and keep the R/C vehicle close to the camera and keep the camera low down for a drivers eye view. I don't think people like it when all they can see is a tiny car in the distance for most of a movie. It is fine for the occasional high speed action shot.

3) My biggest hitting movies are the ones with a variety of cars, variety of conditions and a variety of camera angle - variety is after all the spice of life!!!