Big Mouth Video

My singing group, Big Mouth, recently recorded an audition video for a TV competition and I decided to make a backup, edit it, and upload it to Youtube/Google Videos to share with the other members of the band. Now, aside from the first hurdle being the inability of a Windows Vista and a Windows XP machine to “see” the Sony miniDV camcorder, there were many subsequent issues to deal with.

The incompatibility between camcorder and PC meant that I had to first record the audition tape on to a DVD, using a standard set-top DVD recorder. Once I had it on the DVD, which played in the recorder fine, I had to somehow get the video data on to a computer for editing. Inevitably, the DVD was unreadable on a PC. DVD Data Rescue came to the, ahem, rescue in that regard and allowed me to rip a 200 Mb video file on to my XP machine.

I then tried Windows Movie Maker, Ulead Video Studio, and half a dozen freeware, shareware, and ripoffware programs to try and extract this video into an editable form on the XP machine. Most couldn’t handle the file and the one that could wrecked the aspect ratio with no possible redemption.

Finally, I gave up on that idea and copied the file to my Vista machine, fired up Movie Maker under Vista, which worked first time. I trimmed and faded, cut and spliced, add head and foot titling and credits and then published to a WMV file (came in at 91.3 Mb). Simple. Wish I’d started there first.

Anyway, an upload to Youtube took several hours, it’s not in the public area yet. But, the problem with Youtube is that if you want to share a private video you have to add all the people with whom you want to share it with as Youtube contacts, which is a pain. So, I turned to Google Videos.

Google Videos allows you to upload a video without listing it in the public area, which means you can share it with friends without running the risk of anyone outside your circle getting to see it. It seemed the obvious way forward, so I began the upload, ignoring the recommendation to use the desktop uploader for files above 100Mb. Big mistake, after about half an hour the page timed out, with no chance of resurrection.

So, I took the advice, belatedly. After all, 91.3Mb is pretty close to 100Mb and maybe Google knew in advance that a file of around that size would time out. The desktop uploader requires your name and Google account login, but that’s not a problem. Adding the file and starting the upload is quick and easy and the program gives you a continuous progress report once the upload has started, showing you how much of your file remains to be uploaded. As of now, it’s grabbed 59.3Mb and is still churning away.

Anyway, the bottom line is, don’t use Sony camcorders if you plan to connect to a PC, do use Vista on a powerful machine for video editing rather than XP, don’t use Youtube if you want to share easily but privately, use Google video desktop uploader rather than web-upload for large files. That’s it. Job done. What…? You want to see the audition video? Maybe…but only if we get through to the heats, I’ll make it public…at the moment it’s hidden from public view using the new “unlisted” feature.