Thread: DVD Camcorders
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Old 11-30-2007, 12:57 AM
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R Leo R Leo is offline
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The iMovie tool works pretty well on the MAC but, if you're a Windows man, there's a way with the Windows Movie Maker (WMM) in XP.

Do all the taping you want. Then, later on, download the free Windows Media Encoder (WME) and install it on a machine with a big drive and use WME to encode the DV out of the camera to a wmv file (or files) on your hard drive. You'll need a Firewire converter card (we use a PCMCIA card in a laptop, I don't know what's available for a box machine...) to get the DV into the computer.

You'll need to fiddle with the encoding stream settings to optimize WME's wmv output or you either have a file that's unmanageably large or, uselssly low resolution. Then use WMM to edit the .wmv file, WMM has about the same capabilities as iMovie...prepackaged video effects, titling, etc.

Personally, I think the titling sux in both iMovie and WMM so instead, in post, I generate a still frame in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and output a jpeg that I dump into iMovie or WMM and transition into and out of the frame. You may also be able to do an animation in Flash and output a clip to wmv and use that as well.
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