Absolute Novice Needs Help!

[KettyKrueger]

Hey all

So I've just bought my first camcorder, a Samsung VP-HMX10. Tiny little thing!

Anyways, I recorded a few clips yesterday amounting to 1 minute worth of footage, just to test it out.

Importing the HD material (720p, super fine quality) was fine but the editing stage was a nightmare. iMovie (both versions HD and 8) would crash or take AGES to do anything.

Is this down to the amount of RAM I have (I only have 1GB at the moment)? If so, how much would cut it, 2GB, 3GB, 4GB?? I was planning on buying more RAM anyways.

Also, the footage was really grainy, is this down to the lighting? It was dark outside (blinds closed) and I was using artificial light to illuminate the subject (well just using the ceiling light). Or could it be the camera? To be fair it was only £380 which in the world of HD camcorders is a drop in the ocean.

On last thing, when editing should I converting the frame rate from 60 down to 29? (or is PAL 25?)?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[-DH]

Importing the HD material (720p, super fine quality) was fine but the editing stage was a nightmare. iMovie (both versions HD and 8) would crash or take AGES to do anything. Is this down to the amount of RAM I have (I only have 1GB at the moment)? If so, how much would cut it, 2GB, 3GB, 4GB?? I was planning on buying more RAM anyways.

The camera you purchased only records in a highly compressed format (h.264/MP4) that was intended for delivery only - NOT really meant for editing. So, you'll be better off if you convert the files first to a more edit friendly format. More RAM is always nice, but may not be much help with this task.

Also, the footage was really grainy, is this down to the lighting? It was dark outside (blinds closed) and I was using artificial light to illuminate the subject (well just using the ceiling light). Or could it be the camera? To be fair it was only £380 which in the world of HD camcorders is a drop in the ocean.

Probably due to poor lighting and the possibility that the camera was set to an auto-gain mode.

-DH

Any help is greatly appreciated!
[/QUOTE]

 

[KettyKrueger]

Thanks a lot for the reply!

So what format would you recommend converting to and what would be the best method of converting (which prog will do a passthrough?).

Also, what is auto-gain?

One more thing, is there a programme out there that will tell me that bit rate of a movie file?

Thanks again.

 

[bigbossbmb]

So what format would you recommend converting to and what would be the best method of converting.

Also, what is auto-gain?

One more thing, is there a programme out there that will tell me that bit rate of a movie file?

1) I would try MPEGstreamclip. Convert it to Apple Intermediate Codec or even DVCPro. However, both of these files types will give you substantially larger media files, so be prepared.

2) Gain is artificial boosting of the video signal for low light situations. When the camera is on auto gain, it guesses how much to amplify the signal to get a bright-enough picture. This introduces a lot of noise.

3)Quicktime and VLC