Importing confusion

[SpaceMonkey]

This is a pretty basic question about importing I think. I'm trying to import video to go on a CDROM and I want multiple people working on it on different machines. I went down the rather stupid road of importing them as .AVI files. It seemed to be the only version that would work though. For some reason the picture is awful and of course the files are HUGE.

What I'm asking is quite simple. What should I import them as in order to maximise quality? What boxes do I need to tick in order to get them to work? In an ideal world I'll have it all imported and I can whack it on a bunch of machines.

I'm on multiple machines. Hard drive size ranges from 8 gigs to 30. We're running windows XP. I don't know the machine speed or the RAM. But I don't think it matters. They can all seem to edit the huge AVI things without any trouble at all.

If anyone can point me toward some nice beginner tutorials that I can get people to do, that'd be terrrific.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Try this link for useful info

http://www.ulead.co.uk/learning/learning.htm

user manuals

http://www.ulead.co.uk/vs/documents.htm

Your installation disc should contain several tutorials, if not download from here for vs 9:-

http://www.ulead.co.uk/learning/vs9.htm

When working with video studio press F1 for help, a useful document.

Ok
First of all please read the recommended procedure, the first post in this forum.
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... f06deae748

Trevor

[Ron P.]

To add to the wisdom of Trevor,

I'm on multiple machines. Hard drive size ranges from 8 gigs to 30. We're running windows XP. I don't know the machine speed or the RAM. But I don't think it matters. They can all seem to edit the huge AVI things without any trouble at all.

Are all these computers networked together? If so is there a server that has the fastest CPU, with a large ( 200 + gig preferably larger) Hard drive(s)?

You might not think that the hard drive space, CPU and RAM matters, but yes it does. The Hard drive sizes you mention, is that the Free space or the total size (used space + available free space)? If it is the total size then the 8 gig drive will not be able to handle much over 5 minutes worth of DV-AVI video. The 30 gig size is barely big enough. When you start editing video, you not only need space for the original clip, you also need space for the Temp files which are created while rendering your projects.

DV-AVI is the preferred format for editing, and produces files of about 13 gigs per hour. So to work on a 1 hr video, you would need about 30 gig minimum of free, defragmented space.

Ron P.

[Rich2Putt]

[quote="SpaceMonkey"]This is a pretty basic question about importing I think. I'm trying to import video to go on a CDROM and I want multiple people working on it on different machines. I went down the rather stupid road of importing them as .AVI files. It seemed to be the only version that would work though. For some reason the picture is awful and of course the files are HUGE.

You mentioned CDROM. Unless you meant DVD, DVD will give have better picture quaility then a cd & store a longer video.

[SpaceMonkey]

Yes, but I'm wondering if the size of these files is actually necessary. The video is going on a cdrom. It's a school yeardisk. The files are going to end up as WMV and will only be small. But as I said in the previous post, I don't want them to look awful like these huge AVI files do.

I know they won't be able to go fullscreen without it getting grainy. But I'd hope that if they're small they'll look OK. The AVI files do not. And I think they're excessively large.

I did the same stuff last year myself, for the school, using a mac and iMovie. It was so easy.

The school only has ULEAD available to the kids and I was hoping to get them to do the work for me.

I get that the first response to my first post was bascially RTFM. But I don't think there is a manual that really suits what I'm doing.

Are the smaller computers really useless to me? Considering that I'm not trying to produce DVD quality work, only CDROM (WMV)?

I guess I'll just keep reading and experimenting. Unless someone can suggest a simple process.

[sjj1805]

I think they're excessively large.

You should be editing AVI files (DV) which occupy approx 13GB per hour.
When editing is completed you render them to the required format.
For DVD that is MPEG2. Or in your case WMV

[Ron P.]

SpaceMonkey,

How large is your overall video file? I'm going to guess since your final product will be on CD-ROM, the length of the video is less then 30 minutes, correct? I assume you captured via Firewire, to DV-AVI.

I have an idea, where you could possibly use your method. However you would need to be able to split the total program up to several short, small clips. Given the size of your computers, they would probably be around 5-10 minute clips. The students are provided with the 5 min clip and allowed to edit it. However the students can only render to same as project properties, keeping the project properties the same for all clips. Then when all edits are done, you of course would have to put them together and render a final video file, which would be the WMV. Once the WMV file is rendered, a VCD could be burned, or however your plan to put it on a CD-ROM.

Now it would be ideal to have a network, (server) where the clips for the students could be uploaded to. The students could retreive their assigned clip from the server, edit, render, then upload the edited clip to the server.

May or may not work

Ron P.

[SpaceMonkey]

That sounds like it would work. However, what format would I capture the video as? I can always import it all from the camera again. It will be a pain, but that doesn't matter.

I've actually got rather a lot of video for them to edit. For example, I had a kid get footage from the year 12 camp, the swimming carnival and various other school events. There is actually about three hours from the camp.

I managed to edit videos and put it on the disk last year. They were all in MPEG1. This year I plan for them to be in WMV.

Is there a format the kids can edit the film in which is smaller than average. I think I read somewhere that there is...

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

[Ron P.]

What version of VS would you be using? Just prior to the previous post, I captured a short clip from my camcorder in WMV format. It's not DVD quality, but does allow for smaller file sizes. The only editing done, was to add 2 titles, 1 Smartsound track, and a couple of cross-fade transistions. The project was rendered to WMV, matching my capture setings. However as you probably have read here, editing highly compressed video files can and generally do, cause problems, loss of quality and OOS issues.

With 3 hours of video, that is still going to need alot of space to work.

Ron P.

[SpaceMonkey]

It's Ulead video studio 7. I will get different people working on different stages of the camp....

I could divide it down to half an hour each...