This isn't exactly for a fan edit or anything, but you guys definitely know a lot about video editing & conversion & encoding, so I figure it's a great place to ask!
I've used just the automatic Windows Movie Maker upload in the past with its terrible .AVI output that barely functions even with Windows Media Player. I don't know what's wrong with the program, but it barely seems to be compatible with its own OS, so I'd like to avoid using it.
Anyway, I've got four tapes of Digital 8 footage (about 3 & 1/2 hours - which I intend to edit as well before I upload them to somebody across the country) that I need to get into NTSC format. I think he was looking for 720x480 as well, and my camera is probably 640x480, but I'm sure he can live with the 4:3 square if there's not an easy way to stretch things a bit without distortion. (I really don't know what it records at actually)
Hopefully somebody competent in this can tell me which programs to use. Right now Google is giving me a bunch of companies advertising prices to do it for me, and I definitely want to do it myself...
EDIT: I finally figured out what I'm doing (mostly). Once I stumbled onto the Wikipedia article on Digital 8 film, I discovered the name of the video format, which is DV, and I could find some conversion guides. They're all pointing me towards these two pieces of freeware: DVIO and WinDV
I'm just curious which one is better at the moment. I can use VirtualDub to hack it down from there as long as I export a Type-2 .AVI with either of those programs.
I've used just the automatic Windows Movie Maker upload in the past with its terrible .AVI output that barely functions even with Windows Media Player. I don't know what's wrong with the program, but it barely seems to be compatible with its own OS, so I'd like to avoid using it.
Anyway, I've got four tapes of Digital 8 footage (about 3 & 1/2 hours - which I intend to edit as well before I upload them to somebody across the country) that I need to get into NTSC format. I think he was looking for 720x480 as well, and my camera is probably 640x480, but I'm sure he can live with the 4:3 square if there's not an easy way to stretch things a bit without distortion. (I really don't know what it records at actually)
Hopefully somebody competent in this can tell me which programs to use. Right now Google is giving me a bunch of companies advertising prices to do it for me, and I definitely want to do it myself...
EDIT: I finally figured out what I'm doing (mostly). Once I stumbled onto the Wikipedia article on Digital 8 film, I discovered the name of the video format, which is DV, and I could find some conversion guides. They're all pointing me towards these two pieces of freeware: DVIO and WinDV
I'm just curious which one is better at the moment. I can use VirtualDub to hack it down from there as long as I export a Type-2 .AVI with either of those programs.