Digital camera grief!!!

[Brian Rupnow]

My good wife went out this morning and bought me a new digital camera, at a "sale" because she knows my old Sony camera doesn't work well for making videos of my engines. Its a nice camera, a Kodak Easy Share 1063.--It works well, makes nice movies with audio---BUT--It saves the movies in .mov format. These files are frickin HUGE. Now, my old Sony camera, and my daughters Cannon digital (which is really nice) both save their movies as .avi files which again, are HUGE!!!---But---with Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, which is already installed on my computer I can open these files and save them as .wmv files, which give a tremendous differential in file size. i.e.---A 129 Meg .avi file becomes a 7.47 Meg .wmv file. Why is this important??? Because if I want to post on Photobucket, then to the website here, or if I want to email a video, then I can do that easily with the .wmv files. The .mov files are too big to email, and they take forever to upload to Photobucket. So, where is my grief??? Windows Movie Maker can not open or work with a .mov file. And I can not find any free software photo editing software comparable to Windows Movie Maker that will open a .mov file and resave it to some smaller file format. This is driving me a bit nuts. Unless somebody tells me different I am going to return the camera to the store where she bought it tomorrow morning and go buy a Cannon camera.

 

[rake60]

I have a Kodak Easy Share camera as well.
I use the MOV to Mpeg converter from Aone Software
to convert the MOV files to Mpeg files.

It can be downloaded for free as a trial to show you how it works.
To make it fully functional you have to cough up $25 but it's worth very penny!
It's very user friendly and takes seconds to convert the formats.

Rick

 

[shred]

There are some 3rd-party hacks to get Windows Movie Maker to work with .mov's (Quicktime Alternative and the K-lite codec pack to be more specific)-- I run them myself, but if you have the option, I'd go with return & replace.

 

[jack404]

I have the Aone software but a young digger ( soldier ) i know has a SWMBO thats a IT techy and she put me onto this

http://www.any-video-converter.com/

the free version does everything i need and does my movies (.MOV) to web (.FLV/.AVI more that i have not tryed)

if you want to put words and special screens in then pay for the Pro version but if you just want to make a quick movie from your digicam (FREE!) i reckon this is hard to beat

cheers

jack

 

[Julian]

Hi,

Go into the menu system on the camera and check the quality you are videoing at. Many cameras by default are set to the highest available. You really only need this if you are using it for large screen so reduce it a bit and the file size will come down some. Also check the menu to see if you have a choice on the type of file it saves as.
Just put "freeware mov converter" or similar in google and you will get thousands. A prog called prism works well but I dont have the link handy.

Julian.

 

[SignalFailure]

Brian, I've found the free utilities on the following site to be excellent (you could do a two stage conversion to get to the required end format if necessary e.g. MOV to AVI then AVI to WMV)...

http://www.pazera-software.com/products/zune-video-converter/


This is another program but I've had very limited success with it...

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html


For simple editing this is good (not for MOV's though)...

http://vani.bhargav.googlepages.com/movica


I've found this useful on occasion...

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

...and the final MOV enabled editor is...

http://www.openmovieeditor.org/

Although I've never got round to using it!

Hope one or more are of use,

Paul

EDIT Forgot to say, you'd need access to a *nix box to use that last one

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Unless Kodak has changed in the past 6 months, the Easyshare software tries to take over your life. I helped my sister with hers and it would not let you download your own friggin' pictures to your own pc without going on their website and putting up with all kinds of nonsense. I find this totally unacceptable.

To add insult to injury, I had to find an internet forum devoted to pi$$ed off Easyshare users to get the blasted software completely removed from her pc. It required a specific sequence of registry tweaks to get it removed. I finally gave up and bought her a card reader to get HER pictures out of HER camera. Oh yeah, how did I find out how to remove it? I Googled "Easyshare software sucks." ;D

 

[Brian Rupnow]

AWRIGHT!!!! I returned that sucky Kodak camera, went into my "add remove programs" and deleted all the dumb "Easy Share" software. Then I took out a small mortgage and went to Future Shop and bought a Cannon Power Shot SX110IS digital camera. I have already made a test video and posted it over on the Slinky thread, and everything works as it should. The Cannon saves its video files as .avi files, and my Microsoft Movie Maker software likes it, and we're all happy again!!

 

[rake60]

You will be much happier with the Canon Brian.

My wife uses a Canon Rebel XTi EOS 400D for her hobby photography
business. The software is much more user friendly than the Kodak.

I don't mess with the Canon... (OK I'm not allowed to touch it) :

I still work with the Kodak Easyshare software for my own stuff.

Rick

 

[CrewCab]

and bought a Cannon Power Shot SX110IS

Good move imho

CC

 

[Julian]

For anyone else looking try Fuji. I can't fault mine.


Julian.