Need help with video converting please.

[wanderintraveler]

I have a project that seems simple but it's taking me ages to figure out. I'm making a compilation of my baby's pics/videos and make it as a movie to play in TV/DVD player. I'm using Windows Movie Maker to do this and then planning to burn this using Windows DVD maker. Problem is my videos are in mov file and WMM plays it like they are Chipmunks. So I need to convert this. I have 2 possible video converters to use --- Total Video Converter and/or Iwisoft Free Video Converter.

Question:

1. Which file type is the best for me to convert to? The converters gives so many options and I don't know which to pick. I want the one that will be as close as possible to the original. I don't know much about bitrate and stuff so I was hoping I don't need to manually adjust them. But if there is a need then I will do it. I tried picking AVi-WMV and the size was reduced significantly. It made me doubt if the quality has been reduced by this conversion.

Can anyone help?

[Baldrick]

Increase the bitrate to get bigger file size and better quality. Or convert to dv-avi or lossless video like huffyuv, huge video but you wont lose much quality.

[EddyH]

I think a guy here at work has had some success with TVC - and that for converting monster 1080p, 55mbit MOVs to more usable sizes, no less.

If you're going to then drop them into WMM, then the WMV format should be fine, if you pay attention to the settings.
Resolution & frame rate - keep them the same as it is currently.
Bitrate - it depends on the former specs, and is hard to be firm on. I'd say something like this formula:
Horizontal pixels x Vertical x Framerate (per sec) x 0.3 = bits per second setting
should give a good quality file, similar to WMM's own "high quality" choice (which is ~3000kbit at 720x576x25) without being super hungry for disk. If it doesn't look any good, increase the rate by 50% until it does.

Alternatively, if it allows variable bitrate settings without stating kbits, go for the highest and see what it looks like.

For audio... stereo/mono and khz to match, and at LEAST the proportional equivalent of 128kbit at 44khz 2-channel (ie stereo) when using WMA.

However, there may still be something screwy with your file that makes everyone sound like Alvin even after this processing. Let us know how you get on.

Also, what's the source for these? Digital camera (of a particular make/brand), card-based handycam, tape based camera that's spat out MOVs for some reason when connected for capture, vidcap card software that's being needlessly obtruse?

[wanderintraveler]

Additional information: I'm not using any high tech video cam. Just Panasonic LX3. It can take HD movies.

The original file shows this info: (frankly I have no idea much about bit rate of video and audio including channel and sample rate)
size 1280x720 total size of mov file: 90,209kb
data rate : 23910
total bit rate: 24630
frame rate :30f/s
audio bit rate: 720kbps
channel :1 mono
audio sample rate: 44khz

I have tried almost all type of AVI (choices includes XVID, WMV, H264, DIVX50, DIVX40, Huffyuv there are few more) and Mpeg2. The program I used for these is Total Video Converter. I don't know if I should manipulate the settings but basically I just pick the choice Original rather than custom because I don't know what to input. For HUffyuv it resulted to a file size of 775,000 but the bit rate and everything was even reduced. So why would I convert it to a file the makes it take more space and yet lower the quality.

I tried using the Iwisoft free converter and picked under HD movies one of the choice is HD mpeg2 video. This time I changed the settings to as close as possible to the orig. file size became 76870kb
size 1280 x 720 --- 20000---20384---30f/s---384kbps---2stereo--44khz. It seems to be much closer. There are a lot more choices but I don't think I have the time to try out one by one and compare the results. Is this ok already? Perhaps this Iwisoft Converter is better?

EddyH---you mentioned a formula. I tried it but it's giving me figures in millions. Can you show me based on the data above?

Thanks for any help I can get. I hope to be able to start doing this project soon.

[EddyH]

Ah ... so it's a digital stills cam. Right. That changes things, but only slightly. And raises more questions.

It's probably Motion-JPEG inside that file, hence the rather large filesize. Trying to make output videos with that high bitrate is unneccessary in any case - half should be fine, if you're keeping it hi-def, or a third or less if going to DVD. It'll still look fine in the final form if you have a decent encoder. The framerate etc looks fine.

Quite why you're getting the chipmunk effect, I'm not sure. The fact you have mono audio may be confusing some apps (and they then split the data between the two channels, effectively replaying it 2x as fast), but that's a stupid thing to happen. Does the video itself go 2x as fast, or is it just the sound?

It should be possible to split it out seperately and repair the problem I think, if it's just the sound.

For interim editing I'd try and keep the video in its original form for now, particularly if the problem lies with the audio. It being MOV is the biggest issue because not so many things understand it. Your choice of the HD MPG2 is not a bad second way, and I shouldn't think the quality will be *much* harmed - you may want to raise the bitrate to 25000 instead just for a little extra headroom though, particularly as a 90mb video isn't that much any more. The audio is OK for now, if it's replaying alright. The only thing is, does WMM / WDVDM like it?

And yes, the formula would likely output in millions as that's giving the raw bit-rate. As we are here working in the megabit range (23,910,000 bits/sec for the video alone in your original file), a fairly common occurrence for digital video (though you'd more normally expect 2~9mbit for DVD) this is entirely valid. I get 8.3 mbit/s for using WMV, which should look just fine, because (like MPG4) it's considerably more efficient than MPG2. Though, as before, given that your file is quite short you can feel free to raise that as high as you like until you can't see any visible improvement in the output.

[wanderintraveler]

Yes, it seems the video is ok. It's the audio that doesn't match with the movement.

I finally just used the HD MPEG2 just because I don't have time to look at every options. I wish I knew how to pick the best one. As for bit rate I chose already the maximum option available which is 20,000. I just wonder why they make it so complex ie.. needing to convert just for a software to accept it.

In the meantime this will have to do. Thanks.

[EddyH]

Ah, it's not that bad really, and they certainly don't do it on purpose. It's just that there's nothing solid in digital video, and when all the standards were dreamt up they definitely weren't intended for home use (a people were just getting used to the idea of VCRs when MPG was conceived, and the first few with long-play recording and hi-fi stereo sound were being launched).

There's a lot of tweakability for the professional to get the best out of it, and the necessity of it being compressed means you can't just use a one-size-fits-all solution (basically, maximum possibly quality, all the time, as you've tons of storage - a VHS cassette can be made to hold almost as much digital data as a single-layer DVD with a simple output card that turns 1s and 0s into flashes of light & dark, but it can of course make each of those flashes any colour when being used normally... problem is it's rather noisy too!), or a simple 2 or 3 way switch (LP and EP modes) depending on whether the material is important or not.

This is why DVD recorders have a baffling array of recording modes; there's one here at work that has, IIRC, EIGHT variants on the "SP/LP" setting. The quality of the output is far more sensitive to what you choose, and going for high quality means you get very little recording time; a typical movie would need to be at the 2nd or 3rd highest to fit, rather than best-possible.

Hopefully as we rush headlong into the future we can maybe return to a simpler system like that, as storage becomes ever cheaper, with 1Tb drives (able to hold 200 DVDs in the space of two stacked disc cases) approaching throwaway prices and digital-recording HD videocameras having only a few modes to choose from (max I've seen is 5 so far: 3 widescreen, 1 narrow HD and 1 wide SD). When you can already record high-quality 1080p at an equivalent cost of less than $1/hour, and fit 90 hours into less space than a single VHS, why use anything less?

ANYWAY XD
So the sound still doesn't work? Rats. I think we need to find an expert who is more familiar with this sort of thing. It might be worth asking in one of the other forums - eg camcorders, capturing, audio, conversion - because I'm afraid I'm just not familiar enough with that type of camera or the format, even having owned MOV-making digicams before. Once I found something that could actually read that bass-ackwards Quicktime format, it all went fine.

I'm still holding out for it being something like the converter was expecting stereo and so has done something obscene to the mono track. If there's an option anywhere in the converter software to just "save WAV" or similar, that would be a good starting point. From there it can be, e.g. force-opened as the correct type in CoolEdit and resaved in a working form, to be re-encoded (maybe as LPCM if the software you're loading it into will accept it) and re-multiplexed ("remuxed") with the video stream.

BTW does it DEFINITELY say "720kbps" for the audio stream? Because that works out to a minimum of 45khz where I'm standing, possibly as much as 46.1 depending how you run the maths. For industry standard 44.1khz, mono, 16bit PCM you'd expect it to read between 689 and 706kbit (as in, 44100 samples per second with 16 bits each, divided by either 1024 or 1000), though it could be that your analyser is just oversimplifying. Mind you, I wouldn't put it past the guys who make these devices to have it in some kind of wierd format that IS 720k and it's completely confusing all programs it touches.

Fair enough on the video format choice by the way - you didn't do badly ... and if 20mbit is as high as it goes, and you don't have another - working - utilty that goes higher, we'll just have to run with it. Having mulled things over a bit though, it's also entirely possible that the camera IS recording to MPG(1 or 2) itself. At that rez and bitrate, it could go either way, MPG or M-JPG. In which case, besides the audio, does the program have the ability to split out (demultiplex/demux) the video track as well?

*does some maths*
...also, am I right in figuring that this video we're bothering about is only thirty seconds long?

FINAL THOUGHT for today: Does it play alright in Apple's own Quicktime player? (Free download if you ain't got it)
If so, there's always the option of running an audio recorder with some kind of loopback from the soundsystem (either a physical cable, or - almost universally possible these days - completely digitally and internally) whilst the movie plays in QT. Wouldn't be the first time I've rescued something in a similar manner! Typically it's not seen as the best quality solution, but then again digicam audio is often nasty (you've done well getting 44khz 16bit, even if it is mono), and there's probably enough background noise in baby recordings that it won't make it any worse.

Then trim it to maintain sync and, as above, put it together with your presumably-usable video track to recreate the original form.

[wanderintraveler]

Oh yes it does play in Quicktime player. It just doesn't play well in Windows Movie Maker. I've read somewhere that Windows movie maker doesn't play mov file well. I forgot the reason and I didn't care to dwell on it. I just remembered that it says it needs to be converted and so I ended there and just quickly tried to find something to convert to.

It was suppose to be just a simple task or so I thought. I just want my baby's pics and mini clips to be played chronologically on a dvd player on tv. Nothing ambitious. No major editing. But it ended up that I have to search for software to do this and I decided to use Windows movie maker. Then a converter just to make it work in WMM. After searching, then trying to figure out how to even convert and what to convert it to. With all those specs like video bitrate/audio rate, sample rate ---- I don't even know what they are or how I'm going to manipulate them. Every step for me is complex just because I've never burned any dvd before in my life and I've never done this movie making ever before.

Yes it's true what I was mentioning above is just 1 clip that probably lasts only 1 minute max. But it's just 1 of the many hundreds clippings/pics. So far I've managed to fit 2 month's worth of pics/clippings in only 1 DVD. I haven't burned it yet... well that maybe another thing to research on. I plan on burning on Windows DVD maker. I hope there are no complications.

And yes, I tried to recheck again and it's really 720kbps under audio bitrate. Although I check on some others and they are usually in the 200 plus kbps rate. Why? What does a higher rate mean?

Just as an info I'm using Iwisoft Free Video Converter now because it seems to give me the closest rates (when I click on properties to see the details) to the original. For size it gives the option of from 640x480 to 1980x1020. I picked the same one as the orig which is in between. For video framerate 30 is max and video bitrate 20000 is max. Audio bit rate max at 512 but I chose 384 because higher than that (using HD MPEG2) gives an error message. Same for audio sample rate max is 48000 but I pick 44,000 bec it's the one that it accepts. For channels it has only an option of 2 channel stereo. What is this channel about? The orig video is in mono but converting it in stereo (as it's the only option) doesn't seem to affect the clippings. I tried converting in HD WMV, yes it works as well but the HD MPEG2 still gives the closest rates to the original.