Hello everyone,
I was given a Sony Handycam for Christmas and took it for a walk to Chirk aquaduct this morning. I soon realised you have to film sloooowwwwly and steadily - no jerky movements. On playing back, I realised that you do not, definitely DO NOT mutter bugger when recording........!! The hard part seems to be editing - the prog supplied - Pixella- seems very basic. I'v already got PinnacleStudio 9 but this wouldn't download off my camera. I ended up using Windows Moveiemaker - and made a first video (editing, using transitions and making a title and credits, and adding a music soundtrack. I then tried to import this into Pinnacle but couldn't. I've saved it in AVI as well as Windows Media player format. Please, does anyone have any good sensible advice? I have done some video editing (Premier) - I've a multimedia computing degree - and hope to attend a BBC video training day soon. I'm dying to get going though - and want to be able to edit v#ideo's easily. Planning where I'm shooting etc in advance.
Cheers - and thanks for any advice I may receive,
Gilly

Welcome to the world of video editing! There a plethora of material out there for you to study. Start by cliking on the links above, read, read some more... but more importantly just pick up your camera and film, film, film. Nothing beats practice for getting better!

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I had the same problems with Pinnacle. Currently I use Ulead Video Studio to convert those video files that are not detected by pinnacle.

I have no problem in capturing video from my Sony miniDV Handycam using Pinnacle 9.

The AVI's crated within Movie Maker don't seem to like being imported into other programs, just like the Microsoft owned WMV codec doesnt. I guess it add's something during the render to "protect" the file. Nice one...! lol.

Stoik Video Converter (which is free and easily available, Google for it) does ignore this protection, though, so you can import a file rendered in Movie Maker into this, then export it back out as an unprotected .AVI, to be edited in your application of choice.

I'd recommend you do you're editing within Sony/Video Vegas myself. It's fairly simple to get to grips with, but is used in the industry, even though some people consider it unproffesional...It's also my program of choice for capturing, even when I'm working in Premiere/after effects. Never failed me!

hey i have the same cam and same software and yup it really does suck, but as far keeping the cam still...i noticed if you zoom in a little bit its alot better quality and movements arent slowed down, i use my camera to make tattooing movies so alot of fast movement and it isnt too bad with the zoom on and ALOT light in the room, try it on sport mode too it says its a mode to capture fast movements. my only problem is a 1 min movie turns out to be over 200mb lol

One hour of DV footage takes up 13 Gigs on your hard drive. It's not because the gods have punished you. It's the standard/

Thanks for all your replys. I've invested in Ulead's Videostudio ( with my Christmas gift money. I particularly enjoy the effects available inPhotoimpact for my still pics so thought I'd give this a try.
Cheers,
Gilly