ISO Audio/Video Recommendations

[RKelly]

I am seeking some advice or recommendations for editing audio/video content. This summer I will be traveling to Japan on a sight-seeing trip and am bringing along my camcorder to document it. When I get back I want to take the video in smaller clips and combine it with some music. The idea being that I want my friends/family to have both the audio and visual experiences that I have while being on the road (i.e. what music is important to me and what I was listening to while traveling). I have used TMPGEnc to accomplish this in the past, however since its a transcoder I would like to do something else which wouldn't have to transcode, and thus possibly degrade the quality. Additionally, I am looking for a small text encoder. What I am envisioning is including some text at the beginning of the shot (preferably in the lower left hand corner) which includes the name/artist of the song, as well as the location of where I'm shooting. Preferably I am looking for something free, but would take all recommendations. And while I am moderately computer savy, something with tutorials would be an added bonus. I am using Windows XP. Thanks!

[guns1inger]

tmpgenc is an encoder (and a pretty good quality, if slow, encoder at that). If you are using it right, then quality should not be an issue.

What you haven't specified here is how you want to deliver the results. Is this for email, posting on a website, DVD ? All these options have very different requirements and will require different software.

If you want a free editor that does titles and text overlays, you could look at Windows Movie Maker. It is free and a part of XP. Make sure you upgrade to the latest version (2.1, I believe). It should be OK for small edit jobs. From there you can encode to wmv, which is fine for posting to web sites or emailing. If you ultimately want DVD quality, output from WMM to DV avi, then encode with HCEnc and author with GUIForDVDAuthor

[RKelly]

Sorry, let me clarify. This is primarily to post at a youtube type site to easily share with far away friends. I am using a digital camcorder and transferring the video to the computer in Mpeg-2 format. Thanks for your advice.