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what is the best video editing software (1 Viewer)

philip parsons

Active member
Hello fellow birders,
I have been Videoscoping for a few years now, and I think its about time to
burn onto disk and edit the films I have produced. Can someone provide me with information regarding the best and most efficient software to use?
In the past I have used Sony PC330E and Sony TRV950 camcorders combined with Nikon ED82 fieldscope, with good results.
My lastest set up includes 1. Nikon ED82 Fiedscope, 2. Panasonic HDC TM300
Camcorder combined with either Eagleeye Digiscoping lens, William optics
DCL52 Lens or William Optics DCL 43/37 Lens.
I have included some photo's of the 'set ups' - don't worry I know the 'set ups' look unstable, but I can assure you its well balanced.
The video footage taken with the 'lastest set up' is excellent, the camcorder is light, portable etc and the combination is easy to carry around.
If you want further details please let me know.
Regards Phil
 

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I use pinnacle

The results are very good although it has the occasional crash.

I see you are now using Panasonic HDC TM300 - what do you think of it? I ubderstabd it has the microphones in the back instead of the front. If this is so how does it affect the sound?
 
I use pinnacle

The results are very good although it has the occasional crash.

I see you are now using Panasonic HDC TM300 - what do you think of it? I ubderstabd it has the microphones in the back instead of the front. If this is so how does it affect the sound?

Thanks Guys,
The reason I purchased the Panasonic HDC TM300 camcorder was basically because of its size and light weight.
I will honestly say that the film recorded is better than my Sony TRV950 3CCD
camcorder.
I did notice wind noise when playing back the Slavonian Grebe video - I had forgotten to switch on the 'wind noise reduction', which is very effective when used.
I am a novice, at the moment, using this camcorder, however I am impressed with its manual functions, automatic focus etc.....
I would like to see more response to my question regarding the 'best software' to use for burning onto DVD. The software I require is for mini digital tapes not High Definition.
I have attached 4 No. Videograbs, taken from film recorded using the Pan TM300, 3 No. of 2 No. Buzzards on my garden shed, taken through living room double glazing, and 1 No. of Slavonian Grebe - filmed last weekend.
Regards Phil
 

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Thanks Guys,
The reason I purchased the Panasonic HDC TM300 camcorder was basically because of its size and light weight.
I will honestly say that the film recorded is better than my Sony TRV950 3CCD
camcorder.
I did notice wind noise when playing back the Slavonian Grebe video - I had forgotten to switch on the 'wind noise reduction', which is very effective when used.
I am a novice, at the moment, using this camcorder, however I am impressed with its manual functions, automatic focus etc.....
I would like to see more response to my question regarding the 'best software' to use for burning onto DVD. The software I require is for mini digital tapes not High Definition.
I have attached 4 No. Videograbs, taken from film recorded using the Pan TM300, 3 No. of 2 No. Buzzards on my garden shed, taken through living room double glazing, and 1 No. of Slavonian Grebe - filmed last weekend.
Regards Phil

3 No. Videograbs of Buzzards filmed on garden shed
 

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Phil,

I've done camcording for some time now and found the software that come with the cameras pretty useless. As already stated I've use Pinnacle for some time for editing, through tapes, minitapes and currently from hard disk. I can get a pretty good DVD film ut of it. At around £50.00 it wasn't bad. You can use it for all types of recordings from basic, video from 'still' cameras right up to Hi Def.

Fairly simple to use and add on soundtracks, titles and voice overs.

The only drawback I find is that it can crash occasionally but it has a recovery system so very rarely do I now lose anything.

Happy filming (How do you fix / connect the camcorder to the scope?)
 
Panasonic Hdc - Tm 300 Camcorder Connection

Phil,
Hello Steve,
See 5 No. attached photos - photo No. 1. shows Eagle eye lens with DCL 4337 connection ring attached. The ring thread is 43mm DIA matching the camcorder thread. I had to carefully file the end ring of the 'Eagle eye lens'
so that the inside DIA of the DCL ring matched the outside DIA of the filed lens ring. This was done so I could place the end of the lens as close as possible to the camcorder lens to avoid vignetting.
You will also see in photo No. 1. THE Camcorder with its 'hood' removed for fitting the lens.
Photo No. 2. camcorder fitted to Eagle eye lens etc...
Photo No. 3. camcorder fitted to William Optics DCL52 lens using 43 to 52 stepping ring.
Photo No. 4. DCL52 lens connector/sleeve fitted to fieldscope using Eagle eye lens connector to Nikon scope + 58 to 37mm stepping ring.
Photo No. 5. camcorder + DCL52 lens slid into DCL connector/sleeve, therfore connecting to fieldscope.
The connector/sleeve was obtained from 'SRB GRITURN' and its inside dia almost matched the outside DIA of the DCL52 lens (50.8mm DIA) - I had to machine off 0.3mm from the inside of the connector/sleeve (inside Dia was 50.5mm)
Using the Eagle eye lens, I still get vignetting at low and middle magnifications.
Using the DCL52 lens, Ionly get vignetting at up to 2x mag.
I don't know how this camcorder would perform using normal telescope lenses.
What version of PINNACLE STUDIO do you use for editing film?
Does anybody know if the lens cover of this camcorder can also be removed -lthe same as the lens hood?
Regards Phil
I've done camcording for some time now and found the software that come with the cameras pretty useless. As already stated I've use Pinnacle for some time for editing, through tapes, minitapes and currently from hard disk. I can get a pretty good DVD film ut of it. At around £50.00 it wasn't bad. You can use it for all types of recordings from basic, video from 'still' cameras right up to Hi Def.

Fairly simple to use and add on soundtracks, titles and voice overs.

The only drawback I find is that it can crash occasionally but it has a recovery system so very rarely do I now lose anything.

Happy filming (How do you fix / connect the camcorder to the scope?)
SEE ABOVE
 

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I dumped Pinnacle because I was fed up with the crashes and keep having to get license keys. I now use Corel Video Studio which I find is excellent. It has options for antishake, Exposure, Sharpening and many more editing effects. Also burns a full range of formats.
 
Last edited:
Video editing software

Hi All,

not sure if this thread is still active, here's my 2p.

I have been taking videos using a digital still camera for a few years now, esp in low light when still digiscoping is difficult/impossible (Fuji f31fd). I like the fact that it's easy (no fiddling with ISO, shutter speed, aperture, etc) and also that decent sound adds quite a bit (eg sounds of the rainforest).

I use (and recommend) VirtualDub

http://www.virtualdub.org/

for post processing the video. It's not the easiest thing to use, but it is very powerful and freely downloadable (for Windows -- no linux version AFAIK, and not sure about Mac). It can export to a variety of formats including DivX (mp4) for massive compression without compromising quality too much. There is also a wide array of plugins (also free) for doing various useful bits of video processing such as lightening the video or changing the contrast, adding effects, etc.

I went to a talk about video digiscoping at the birdfair on Sunday which was informative as far as it went but failed to talk about post-processing at all. I guess I was a bit disappointed because I'd hoped to learn something new stuff and didn't -- it was more targetted at people thinking about starting.

As the presenters commented, a big problem is often camera shake. While you need to do what you can to minimise this, what they didn't mention was that sometimes it's inevitable (eg in a strong wind, or in a hide where people are moving about) or that there is something you can do about it afterwards: the good news is that with VirtualDub there is a free plugin called DeShaker (by Gunnar Thalin)

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

that works in two passes. In the first it estimates the gross camera motion (optical flow), and estimates what is due to shake (as opposed to, say, steady panning motion), and in the second it reconstructs the image sequence removing the shake. The results on SD video are very good. I can't imagine it being much different on HD, maybe even better. Lots of examples (non birding) can be found on youtube, and I would be happy to post a few before/after videoscoping examples if people want.

The re-rendering of the video leads to a small but occasionally noticeable decrease in sharpness (in some cases this is because of a slight up-scale of each frame needed to remove unwanted borders), but usually this is more than compensated for by the new steady sequence.

What it doesn't do is remove gross motion blur. Another effect I have seen is that dust spots on the CCD which are rarely noticed in stills or in a video (because they don't move), now jiggle about (showing exactly what motion has been removed from the original) and can become an irritant; see, eg,

http://picasaweb.google.com/iandreid/AragonBirding#5406491226839679058

But overall I now consider this to be a fantastic and indispensable tool that can turn an unwatchable video into something quite smooth.

Cheers, Ian
 
I went to a talk about video digiscoping at the birdfair on Sunday which was informative as far as it went but failed to talk about post-processing at all. I guess I was a bit disappointed because I'd hoped to learn something new stuff and didn't -- it was more targetted at people thinking about starting.

As the presenters commented, a big problem is often camera shake. While you need to do what you can to minimise this, what they didn't mention was that sometimes it's inevitable (eg in a strong wind, or in a hide where people are moving about) or that there is something you can do about it afterwards: the good news is that with VirtualDub there is a free plugin called DeShaker (by Gunnar Thalin)

Dear Ian,

As you say, the talk was about trying to get people interested in video digiscoping as a super easy alternative to regular digiscoping, particularly when the light is poor. But naturally, as you can well imagine, it is hard to speak to an audience where there are mixed levels of experience but, considering that very very few people seem to regularly do video digiscoping, we spoke mostly of (1) why to do it, (2) how to get started, and (3) how to make your videos a little better.

I shall have to check out the software you suggest as I have used some shake reduction software programmes before but never really been happy with the results (much softer images). Which is why so much of the talk was dedicated to getting images with less shake (aiming to eliminate as much as possible).

I'd love to see some of your videos, btw :t:

Happy birding,
Dale
 
I shall have to check out the software you suggest as I have used some shake reduction software programmes before but never really been happy with the results (much softer images). Which is why so much of the talk was dedicated to getting images with less shake (aiming to eliminate as much as possible).

I'd love to see some of your videos, btw :t:

Happy birding,
Dale

Hi Dale,

sorry it's taken me a long time to post a follow up. Your Gurney's Pitta video was utterly gripping and *the* higlight of the talk for me.

I have been trying to sort out webpages with some of my videos and it's taking me a long time, sorry. I've put one example on youtube though, with more to follow. You can view it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYWEzPvs5Rc

This video is of the long-staying Snowy Owl in Cornwall, Jan 2009. The day I visited was fairly grey and there was constant wind. Even the best videos (and pics) I got were a little washed out and there was camera shake from the wind on all the vids.

On the left is the original, while on the right is the processed version in which I have run deshaker and also added a small amount of sharpening (built in to virtualdub's filter bank).

This is obviously not the world;'s greatest vid of a Snowy Owl, but I hope demonstrates how effective deshaker can be.

I aim to add more and eventually to link these from my birding homepage at

http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~ian/Birding

Cheers, Ian
 
wow, Ian, I am completely stunned. That worked incredibly well, far better than that which I was getting out of shake reduction programmes.

and snowy owl is something I have longed to see for many many years, but always dipped. Awesome!

Happy digiscoping,
Dale
 
Hi All,

not sure if this thread is still active, here's my 2p.

I have been taking videos using a digital still camera for a few years now, esp in low light when still digiscoping is difficult/impossible (Fuji f31fd). I like the fact that it's easy (no fiddling with ISO, shutter speed, aperture, etc) and also that decent sound adds quite a bit (eg sounds of the rainforest).

I use (and recommend) VirtualDub

http://www.virtualdub.org/

for post processing the video. It's not the easiest thing to use, but it is very powerful and freely downloadable (for Windows -- no linux version AFAIK, and not sure about Mac). It can export to a variety of formats including DivX (mp4) for massive compression without compromising quality too much. There is also a wide array of plugins (also free) for doing various useful bits of video processing such as lightening the video or changing the contrast, adding effects, etc.

I went to a talk about video digiscoping at the birdfair on Sunday which was informative as far as it went but failed to talk about post-processing at all. I guess I was a bit disappointed because I'd hoped to learn something new stuff and didn't -- it was more targetted at people thinking about starting.

As the presenters commented, a big problem is often camera shake. While you need to do what you can to minimise this, what they didn't mention was that sometimes it's inevitable (eg in a strong wind, or in a hide where people are moving about) or that there is something you can do about it afterwards: the good news is that with VirtualDub there is a free plugin called DeShaker (by Gunnar Thalin)

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

that works in two passes. In the first it estimates the gross camera motion (optical flow), and estimates what is due to shake (as opposed to, say, steady panning motion), and in the second it reconstructs the image sequence removing the shake. The results on SD video are very good. I can't imagine it being much different on HD, maybe even better. Lots of examples (non birding) can be found on youtube, and I would be happy to post a few before/after videoscoping examples if people want.

The re-rendering of the video leads to a small but occasionally noticeable decrease in sharpness (in some cases this is because of a slight up-scale of each frame needed to remove unwanted borders), but usually this is more than compensated for by the new steady sequence.

What it doesn't do is remove gross motion blur. Another effect I have seen is that dust spots on the CCD which are rarely noticed in stills or in a video (because they don't move), now jiggle about (showing exactly what motion has been removed from the original) and can become an irritant; see, eg,

http://picasaweb.google.com/iandreid/AragonBirding#5406491226839679058

But overall I now consider this to be a fantastic and indispensable tool that can turn an unwatchable video into something quite smooth.

Cheers, Ian

Thanks to everyone for information, especially Ian - I will download this system and see if it will also work with HD video.
Regards Phil.
 
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