Creating Playable Music, Picture, Video Disks of Family Reunion.

Anak · Jan 23, 2013

I am in conversation with a Cousin a State away that has had a family reunion and has a lot of pictures and video that she has asked me if I could create playable disks for her and others in the family.

I have done this before for myself and others using Windows DVD maker (WDVDM), I have made disks of pictures plus music, but video will be a new ballgame.

Would WDVDM be okay for the video or does anyone know of something better?
I am assuming that I can add music to the video Yes, or No?

One other item I thought of is; What if the video is too big to send through the emails.
I have gmail, I know I can do 10MB, and I have read where it might go as high as 25MB but I can not find anything definitive on that, and it is almost a gimme that the video files are bigger than 10, even 25MB.
I can not find anything on limits for her email service (gosps).

Would there be a way to compress or segment the video into smaller files for email?
What if she or others in the family have a Mac? Is there a picture/video editor that can convert to a Mac?
Is Blu-Ray possible with WDVDM? That and the Mac question are reasons why I asked about a different video editor.

whs · Jan 24, 2013

1. I would use the Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) for the job. You can mix movie clips and pictures, you can add music, you can lighten or darken your videos (pictures I would edit beforehand) You can add a header and trailer with your own text, you can add fancy animations between the clips and pictures. It is a very good tool.

2. One you saved your movie, it will definitely be more than you can attach to an email. But you can upload it to YouTube or Vimeo from where they can play it or download it (you can put a password on it). Just send the link. You can also put it in a .zip folder and upload it to e.g. Skydrive from where they can download it.

If you need more details, let me know.

Anak · Jan 24, 2013

Thank you whs if I get stuck, I will get back to you.

Right now we are going over the basics I'm pretty sure she picked some background music you would enjoy, me too.

whs · Jan 24, 2013

Nice, but that is not really may kind of music. I usually use baroque music (Vivaldi, Telemann, etc.) as background.

Anak · Jan 24, 2013

I'll keep baroque in mind. Mozart would be included in that group also wouldn't he?

I like the idea of uploading to YouTube or Vimeo.

I checked, and I have this version of WLMM that came with our machine

, would that be okay to use?

whs · Jan 24, 2013

That looks like the right thing. Open it and see whether it looks like this:

Anak · Jan 24, 2013

It is close, but there are some differences. I am not sure if they matter or not:

whs · Jan 24, 2013

I think they are the same. I may have some options enabled that do not yet show on yours. I use that all the time.

Anak · Jan 24, 2013

Okay, I'll go with that.

Next on the list is to register with YouTube to create an account.

EDIT:

How much free storage does YT allow?

I already have a Picasa account and it allows 5GB, but that's probably still not enough for videos.

whs · Jan 24, 2013

No idea how much YT allows. It does not say. But I have put videos there since years and it has never complained.

Anak · Jan 25, 2013

I think I am beginning to see a problem, if my cousin's video recorder doesn't have a way to convert her video to DV, that part of the project will have to be put on hold for a while.

I'll know more when I talk to her Saturday.

whs · Jan 25, 2013

How was your cousin's video recorded and what is the file format.

Anak · Jan 25, 2013

whs said:
How was your cousin's video recorded and what is the file format.

That will be the question I will ask her when I talk to her on Saturday.
I should know by 5pm est.

Anak · Jan 26, 2013

Hi whs good evening,

I talked with my cousin, and the video I was worried about is a moot point. She has a Cannon ES8100V 8mm and will be taking the tape to Costco's Photo Center to have the analog video (AV) converted to Digital Video (DV) and burned to disk, then upload them to an account she has with Snapfish(SF).

I was concerned about the cost, but she has done this before and doesn't think it will be that bad, maybe around $20US. All I know is I have heard it is expensive and thought it would be much more than that.
It says this at the Photo Center link under product details, I underlined two areas:

Pricing starts at $17.99. A 2nd DVD copy is included with every transfer order.

Just bring your reels, tapes and slides to Costco 1-Hour Photo. Pick up your DVDs in about 3 weeks.

It's nice she will get a copy, but we'll see.

There is 25" of video and I told her to expect two disks. I was reading where 14GB equals about an hour of running time, so, turning that around and rounding the 25" to 30 I figured 7GB and two DVD disks.

I have already downloaded her pictures. The only thing I dislike is SF only allows a 10MB zipped download, I don't mind the .zip part, but do on the size limit.

I'll be online for a while yet, but it's getting late here so I think I'll call it a night and start on them tomorrow.

whs · Jan 26, 2013

Well, that seems to solve that problem. I convert my VHDs myself. Quality usually suffers, but maybe Costco can do a better job. I have a great variety in output size per minute - from 20MB/min to 50MB/min. No idea why because all those videos were taken with the same camera.

Anak · Jan 26, 2013

Do you use something like this? Dazzle Video Creator Platinum HD I've seen it on amazon from $219.00 new to $80/85 used, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with it; poor quality, skips/drops, sound suffers, and non-existent support.

Not sure about your varying DV output, maybe it is your converter. If I come across anything I'll let you know.

whs · Jan 26, 2013

I used the gear and a program from this company. I think I paid appr. $60 for it. The quality is OK and I have no skips or sound problems. But when played on TV, it is not the same as the original VCR. But fortunately there are ways to improve it a bit with the PC.

Anak · Jan 26, 2013

You probably already know about this, it's about 8mm, but if you scroll down a bit in the first answer you'll see it below the Some points to keep in mind for better quality DVD's: section:

- If you transfer two hours of VHS to a DVD it can result in a significant loss of quality unless you have a high quality MPEG-2 encoder or use methods that encode the video at "half resolution." The normal DVD video resolution is 720x480 for NTSC, but some encoders and DVD authoring programs allow you to use 352x480 resolution. When you convert VHS to DVD this smaller resolution can still deliver very good results at the low data rates (bitrates) required to fit two or more hours of video on one DVD, especially if you use an analog-to-MPEG2 encoder or a standalone VHS to DVD recorder that bypasses the analog-to-DV step.
- Try to use compressed audio on your DVD's. Uncompressed - PCM - audio takes up a lot of space on the DVD that could better be used for higher-quality video. Dolby Digital/AC3 is the best choice for audio compression.

Source: I have many 8mm camcorder tapes that I want to convert to DVD. Is there a conversion kit available that I can buy?

whs · Jan 27, 2013

Thanks for the info.

Anak · Jan 27, 2013

Your welcome, well its past midnight for me, and I'm heading for bed. I'll catch up tomorrow, good night.

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