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  1. Let's start at the beginning. For 12 years, I used a Canon ZR-45MC camera, recording in MPEG-2, to film "Online Video", the LONGEST RUNNING web series in internet history (that I have been able to find), at www.loudmouthtim.com . I always used Windows Movie Maker 2.6 for editing. I know, it is old, but hey, it worked for me, I was used to it, and it was FREE.

    Then the CCD in the camera finally died. Had to replace it. I got a Canon Vixia HF R600. It works fine, but it records in MPEG-4. You can't directly import MPEG-4 to Windows Movie Maker 2.6 .

    So a video editor "friend" from Los Angeles suggested using MPEG Streamclip to convert the files to .AVI . That works, I can import them. But there is a problem. The camera shoots widescreen, and Movie Maker doesn't have any widescreen options, just 4:3. So my videos come out looking horizontally "squashed".

    The same friend said I left out the step of taking the completed .WMV web episodes, and re-running them through MPEG Streamclip to re-encode them back to widescreen.

    But MPEG Streamclip won't import a .WMV file.

    Now what? How can I correct this, short of finding another video camera that shoots in MPEG-2?

    Look at episodes 177 to 181 on my site, www.loudmouthtim.com , under the green "Webshows" tab, and you'll see what I mean about the video looking horizontally squashed. Compare them to episode 174 or any earlier episode to see how it should look. I want to un-squash the video.
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  2. Why would you use a video camera to shoot the screen when you can just download the video files? If your editor can't import WMV files just convert them to something it will import with a program like ffmpeg.
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  3. Member DB83's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Why would you use a video camera to shoot the screen when you can just download the video files? If your editor can't import WMV files just convert them to something it will import with a program like ffmpeg.
    Simply because he is not.

    He creates online video which is in 'postage stamp' .wmv format - so hardly s.o.t.a.

    To the OP.

    That video is probably 'squashed' due to normal mpeg2 storage ie 720*480 non-square pixel for NTSC. You really must re-encode to a more web-friendly format with square pixels.

    And if you have been doing this for a long time you really should know how to do it by now.
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  4. Oh, I see. The OP is creating the videos at that site.

    Probably the best thing to convert to for WMM is DV AVI. Assuming a 4:3 source, the ffmpeg the command would be something like:

    Code:
    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv411p -vf scale=w=720:h=480 -vcodec dvvideo -acodec adpcm_ima_wav output.avi
    If your new camera is shooting 16:9 and you want a 4:3 result you can crop the left and right edges leaving a 4:3 frame and then convert. Upload a short sample from your camcorder for more precise instructions. Shoot something of obvious aspect ratio, like a globe or basketball at the center of the frame.
    Last edited by jagabo; 11th Jun 2017 at 17:34.
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