well, i made my first video, and its all in .avi format

[Marc]

now what do I do?

Can anyone tell me how to put it into .wmv format?
Should I put it in .mpg format instead?
also is there an easy way to cut up the video into 10 second clips, and into 3 minute clips for the members area?

thanks for any advice.

[gaybucks_chip]

If you're using a reasonably recent version of Premiere, it has Adobe Media Encoder which will output to Real, Windows Media, Quicktime, or various other formats. I think most of the other popular programs (Vegas, Ulead, etc) do also.

If you're going to be doing this a lot, I recommend Sorenson Squeeze, which is a batch encoding program.

There are definitely programs out there that will split video for you, but keep in mind, you really should have 2257 information on each clip, so for all practical purposes, you will probably need to split them manually so you can add the 2257 slide.

Hope that helps.

[Marc]

If you're using a reasonably recent version of Premiere, it has Adobe Media Encoder which will output to Real, Windows Media, Quicktime, or various other formats. I think most of the other popular programs (Vegas, Ulead, etc) do also.

If you're going to be doing this a lot, I recommend Sorenson Squeeze, which is a batch encoding program.

There are definitely programs out there that will split video for you, but keep in mind, you really should have 2257 information on each clip, so for all practical purposes, you will probably need to split them manually so you can add the 2257 slide.

Hope that helps.

thats very helpful, thanks a lot.

do you use mpeg or wmv format?
also are there any cheap solutions to converting avi to wmv or mpeg?
I dont want to buy a $400-600 peice of software if it turns out I dont end up making lots of videos

[basschick]

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/pro...egasfamily.asp
try one of the two cheapest versions of sony vegas. not only do they make GREAT quality wmvs once you have them figured out, but the 30 day free trial will make wmvs without any annoying watermarks from sony - the only limitation is it won't work with mpgs, which isn't a problem here

[Marc]

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/pro...egasfamily.asp
try one of the two cheapest versions of sony vegas. not only do they make GREAT quality wmvs once you have them figured out, but the 30 day free trial will make wmvs without any annoying watermarks from sony - the only limitation is it won't work with mpgs, which isn't a problem here

kickass, thank you!

you only use wmv format? and thats been good for you? no complaints from tgps or your members?

[basschick]

i don't post movie galleries, but while i am planning to go with a second format down the road, mpg won't be it. wmv streams - most people can start watching within a minute or less - where with a full video in mpg format you can wait 10 minutes for the video to start playing. i expect to go with quicktime since most of the people who have had trouble with wmvs are mac users.

and so far, not one member has had trouble with our videos - although please note that we are NOT using the newest WMV codec. if you use the newest, expect a few complaints.

[gaybucks_chip]

If I were going to offer an alternative format to wmv, I would probably go with Flash. It's totally platform independent, so the Linux and Mac users can view it.

WMV has a very large % of the market, so I'd definitely use that over .mpg as a first choice.