After spending numerous HOURS recording and attempting to convert and edit a simple video to put on a web page, I finally succumbed to the siren song of the 15″ MacBook Pro. (2.66 ghz dual core, 4gb ram and 250gb 7200 rpm hd) I went online and since I’m one that likes to get a “bargain” I decided to order a refurbished unit, entered my details and chose express shipping. This was Saturday.
Monday, the order arrives by noon. After the initial set-up, I took awhile to familiarize myself with the Mac, which I must say, though straight forward enough still took this PC vet a while to get used to.
This morning already, I’ve transferred ITunes to the Mac, (important stuff first!) and have almost completed my first videoproject !
1. I hooked up my Canon HD Camcorder (HF11) to the Mac and opened IMovie – voila!!! There are all the video clips – I imported them lickety split. No converting! Yea!!!!
2. Editing out what I didn’t want was a breeze!!! Very intuitive and took very little time at all.
3. I saved the file to a Quicktime .mov format using a set of specs that a friend suggested I standardize on (H264, Codecs, keyframes, framerates, etc) It’s mostly Greek to me ; ) Here is what he suggested:
Here is the spec i use when converting from anything to and from. I’ve even found if i used some other spec before using this as a final conversion it will make the final look better.
Size: 1280×720 is the current flavor of choice
Codec:H.264… MOV QuickTime
Size:High definition (1280×720)
Bitrate: 5000 kbits/sec for.
Frame rate: 29.97
Keyframes: Every 30 frames.
Deinterlace: On
Sound sample rate: 44.100 kHz, bit rate of 128 kbps
4. It took about an hour to export 6 minutes of video to that format
5. Once that file is done I will copy to my PC and see how the file plays with Techsmith Camtasia. I like their editor as it has some great functions like pan and zoom, and the ability to export to flash for quick and easy upload to websites. I’ve got their version 5 and 6 and see they are working on a Mac version. Awesome!
Since I was on a roll, I went ahead and ordered Final Cut Studio, so I’ll report my experience with that as well. My friend assures me that next I’ll be ordering toast.
Hmm, that reminds me. I’m hungry!
