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Dslr bird video thread (1 Viewer)

Hi Marcus

I notice that like Pete your video is in a letterbox, did you use Canon's zoombrowser as well to edit the video?

I take it you were using a 7D but with what lens?

Robert

PS excellent video
 
well I've just given Windows Live Movie Maker a go and it seems to work well enough - nice to be able to work with the original video files rather than converting them first. I still can't work out the audio but will get there in time. Just put together some bits of redshanks from earlier in the year - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXenmnmi1w
 
Pete,

You can adjust the audio volume in Windows Live Movie Maker as follows:

Click on Edit, then Video volume and move the slider to the left to decrease the volume or mute the audio altogether. You will have to do this for each video clip. It is rather time consuming but, with care, it is possible to equalize the volume on consecutive clips.

Mike
 
Pete,

You can adjust the audio volume in Windows Live Movie Maker as follows:

Click on Edit, then Video volume and move the slider to the left to decrease the volume or mute the audio altogether. You will have to do this for each video clip. It is rather time consuming but, with care, it is possible to equalize the volume on consecutive clips.

Mike

thanks for that - so straight forward to do, not sure how I failed to find that myself... I have re-done the woodchat shrike with the audio removed and without the letterbox thing, hopefully it's better for it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMgpugw2o0s
 
As so many have been using Movie Maker I thought I would give it a try. Now I have been doing bird videos for some years now so do know a bit about editing.

I found that Movie Maker worked very well in trimming and combining clips, putting titles on them and nice simple output to Youtube and others. I also found that you could burn the video to a DVD but herein lies the weakness.

Moviemaker is excellent for doing those short clips to put on the various websites but if you have say a dozen videos and want to put them on DVD they would have to be as one single but large video. There is as far as I could find no means of putting chapters in so one could select individual bird videos to watch. Neither at this time is there a means of writng Blu ray discs which is the way forward for me so that I can view my videos in full HD in due course.

Movie maker is clearly designed for basically the one big holiday video not a collection of individual clips. However it is excellent for those small single clips no question of that.
 
This is probably a really dumb question but.....

Does anyone know of an freeware/ fairly cheap application that can heavy crop videos in-frame (in the same way that you crop a photo) without losing quality somewhere in the workflow?

A lot of the birds I video are fairly distant but I can still get decent quality videos which look OK when played on my PC. When I upload these to youtube, etc the compression makes them look rubbish.

Since I only need about 10% of the frame to show the bird(s) what I'd like to do is a fairly significant crop of the frame size (as for an image) which would reduce the size of the file before compression and therefore (I hope) limit the reduction in quality.

I know some programs like VirtualDub can crop but they don't take .mov or .wmv files as inputs. Converting the mov output of my camera (a 7D) to something it does take (like avi or mpeg) applies too much compression with the resultant reduction in quality before cropping.

Windows movie maker allows zoom and pan, which is a nice piece of functionality in theory but it only crops by a tiny percentage.

All ideas appreciated.

Cheers

Matt

Two files attached screenshot 2 is a screengrab of the mpeg video and screenshot is a screengrab of the mov video. Hopefully the difference in quality should be obvious in the jpegs.
 

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7D Noise potential solution

not fluffy but it came with a foam one .
The problem is that if fitted in the hotshoe its directly over the motor .
I just velcroed it to the end of my 500mm and it is better by around 50% less noise .
it is the IS motor for sure as theres NO sound with IS Off.
Rob.
eddit might be 65% less noise
Eddit again Now if i hold the mic as far away as i can from the lens its what i would call Pretty much ok .

Eddit Sorry
theres no way i can stop hearing the noise if the mic is in someway (apart from lead ) attached to the camera/monpod/tripod even with sponge as a dampner.
SO iv just ordered a 3m extention lead then i can stick it on a pole or something well away from the lens, i think this is the only way to make it work.

Hi to all those with 7D noise:
I have investigated the problem of noise and believe it is not based on the noise from the camera. I tried a new Robe pro and found it produced noise on an off the camera. I found what I believe is a logical answer and solution on line.

*Canon 7D has no manual gain control. Manual control would allow the user to set sound levels appropriate to situation auto doesn't. (Canon and others are working on a firmware patch)
*The result is that the camera cranks up the gain to 'find' sound level in quiet settings - the result is noise.
*Solution - trick camera to setting gain lower.

I am attempting to confirm a solution I found on line.
You need a mic, adapter, MP3 player, download mpg 'pink sound' and the ability to turn off & on individual audio tracks recorded.
*Canon can record stereo but the Robe is a mono mic.
*Get a adapter like the one in the photo attached. Plug in the mic to one input and a MP3 player into the other. The adapter into the camera. I'm looking at an IPod Nano: would be a great solution due to its size. Was trying to avoid weight and hassle of getting an off camera audio recorder so no point replacing it with an equally cumbersome MP3 player.
*Download 'pink sound' to mp3 and play it whilst filming - recording. Pink sound will set gain low on both tracks but only record on one track.
*Sound from the mic will record on the other track.
Delete pink sound track and your left with clean recording on the other.

I'll let you know how I go!
 

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