You’ve found those old vhs or Digital 8 tapes you made years ago and wouldn’t it be fun to upload to YouTube to share with relatives and friends? But first you’ve got to get that video into your computer somehow. And how do they get those YouTube videos looking so good, anyway? Here’s a process I use on a weekly basis using free software tools.
I work with my church’s audio/visual committee and every week we record video of our church service and make the sermon available online. We record from an old Digital 8 camcorder to a digital video recorder and then make a DVD of the service which I take home with me to edit and upload. You may already have a DVR you can use to record your videotapes to DVD+/-Rs or use DVD+RWs that you can erase and reuse.
Please click “Read More” to continue reading the step-by-step instructions of how to do this. Also, please click on any of the images in this article for a larger view of them.
1. Download and install Avidemux. http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/download.html
2. Copy VTS_01_1.VOB and all other files numbered in that sequence from DVD to a folder on your hard drive.
3. Open Avidemux. Go to File/Open and browse to VTS_01_1.VOB on your hard drive. A pop-up will say “This looks like an mpeg file, do you want to index it?” Check Okay. A pop-up will see that it’s one file in a series and ask if you want to open all files. Click OK. After a few seconds the video with audio will open in the edit window.
4. Using the slider at the bottom find the point where you want your video to begin. You can do this by clicker on the slider and dragging it. You can also be more precise by using the arrow buttons on your keyboard (the left and right arrows move one frame at a time and the up and down arrows move back and forth faster than that). Clicking on A marks the part where you want your video to begin. Click B at the bottom to mark the end of the part you want to keep.
5. At the left under Video the drop-down box default is “Copy”. Click on that and choose “Mpeg4 ASP (xvid)”. Under Format, choose AVI.
6. Click on Configure under the Video menu at the left. A pop-up will let set configuration options. From the Encoding Type drop-down, choose “Two Pass – Average Bit-rate” and for “Average Bitrate (kb/s)”type in 1800. Click OK. (For better quality, you may want to choose 2500, but this will make your file larger. These are settings I used most often but ou can try it different ways and see what you like best.)
7. Click on Save button. Name your file, including the file extension “.avi” and choose the folder where it should be saved. Click Okay to render and save your video.
This is the basic, minimum required to make a video clip for uploading to YouTube, Vimeo, or other video hosting services. There is a lot we can do to tweak the quality of the video if you want to take the time to play around with it a bit.
You can change the aspect ratio of your video so it won’t look like it’s stretched too wide. To fix this, click on Filters under Video on the left. On the Transform tab, double click on Mplayer Resize and type in “640″ for the Width. Click OK. It will appear in the Active Filters on the right. This changes your video from the DVD format of 720×480 pixels that gives a slightly elongated look if not corrected, to 640×480.
You can improve the appearance of the video by deinterlacing it. In the Filters panel, choose the Interlacing tab, then double click on Decomb Telecide. In the drop-down for Strategy choose No Strategy. Click Okay. It will now appear in the Active Filters on the right.
If you need to adjust the color, brightness, or contrast, in the Filters panel choose Color, then double-click on MplayerEq2. It will appear in the Active Filters on the right. Double-click on it there and you’ll see all your options. Make adjustments as needed. You’ll be able to see how the filter will change your video in the right side of the preview window. After clicking Okay, you can click on Preview at the bottom to preview the full video.
If you need to fix “noisy” video, click the Noise tab. A good choice is MSmooth. A good setting to begin with is Threshold 10 or 1 and Strength 1. Depending on how “grainy” your video is, you may want to try out several different settings or try some of the other filters in the Noise tab and see which work best for you.
Sometimes smoothing video this way means you need to sharpen it just a bit to enhance the edges. If you need to sharpen your video, I recommend MSharp. Start with settings of Threshold 8 or 10, Strength 70 or 80, check your results and make adjustments as needed..
Your video may also benefit from using the Blend Remover filter under the Misc. Tab to minimize the blur between frames. The settings I usually use for that are Threshold 10, Noise 2, Identical 2.
When trying out different filters you’ll save time if you render a small segment of your video as a sample to help find the settings you want to use. After you’ve chosen all the filters you want to use for your video, click Close at the bottom right of the Filters panel. Then click the Save icon at the top, browse to the folder where you want to save your video, give your video a file name, including file extension “.avi” and click Okay. You’re video will begin encoding.
You could spend months researching sites like http://www.videohelp.com/ to learn all there is to know about working with digital video, but this will get you started. Check back later and we’ll take a look at a variety of capture devices that will let you record video directly to your computer’s hard drive.
You can check out a sample of a video done with these methods here.
This is the very first guest post for StarterTech! We’d like to welcome Donna Pool whom we’ve had a long relationship with on a couple of video related projects. She is amazing at how quickly she can work on a video problem for you and get it solved. You can find out more about Donna by checking at her blog, her eTsy store or her recently opened Zazzle store.
