Crunchy Frog Video Finally Edited – Thankyou Virtual Dub and Camtasia Studio 7
Anybody would think I’d set out to make a proper movie! Back in June when the sun still shone – when there was a hint of strength in the arms; Tim, Dorine and myself warmed up on Brown Slabs Corner before Tim had a poke at Crunchy Frog. It was one of those evenings with warm sun, perfect warm rock and azure skies. Where did they go? While Tim led, Dorine belayed and I just leaned back against the tree and caught almost the whole climb on my little cheapo video camera as Tim cruised up.
Like a smart arse though, I decided to hold the camera portrait style to get the (foreshortened) perspective of the whole route, and when I first tried to edit the movie on Windows Movie Maker, discovered that WMM squished the aspect so the the movie would have been a very short fat crunchy frog.
I’ve beeen catching up on a few things lately and I decided to find out if there was anything that would sort the rotation problem out.
Thanks to a CNET video I found, I was pointed at a little open source app called Virtual Dub, which will do all sorts of little manipulations to videos. I’ve only used it to rotate video clips of the Crunchy Frog outing from their landscape orientation in the camera, to portrait style again so you can watch them without a cricked neck. It is however clear that it can do a lot more than that.
It’s up on the Source Forge download site, or you can download Virtual Dub from here. I’ve scanned it multiple times and it’s a clean download, so I’ve no worries about hosting it here.
The other inconvenience was: the cheap little video camera I got from maplin is cheap because it isn’t compatible with anyone else’s software. The sound sampling rate is non standard and the video codec it uses – masquerades as an AVI but doesn’t play ball with anything other than the Arcsoft Media Impression software that is bundled with the camera. And I have to say I’ve found that software to be crap!
So wasn’t I a happy bunny yesterday when I got an email from Paul Lynch of Cambridge Business Academy. I’m trying to learn a few of the tricks that these boys know because they have become solidly successful online in a very short space of time. The email said – well done youth you’ve won some kit!!
They had run a competition in June about video marketing on their exceptionally helpful online business forum which goes under the title of Honest Work From Home Success. I had made a few posts and a couple of videos to help out one or two other forum members. What I couldn’t believe was that I was 4th in the rankings. So I had won about $600 worth of video software and marketing stuff. I wish I had woken up to these guys style of teaching… before I had spent all my money on training from an American outfit. If you want to get online for anything business related, use these guys – one of the main men is Kevin Potts a sort of slightly potty vicar, while another is Paul Lynch who is an amazing expert on getting your websites ranked so people see them. They are ranked number 1 for the uber competitive search term make money online. It would cost you or I thousands to get there just for a week, but these blokes understand how to do things with subtlety not cash. Don’t expect cheapo courses though, these guys don’t mess about and go way beyond mere marketing tips.
Well one of the prizes was the brand new version of Camtasia Studio 7 which for the sort of video I need to start producing is the “Donkey’s Doodahs”! More about that later. This baby reads the files from my current dodgy cam and sorts them as well as doing all sorts of fancy stuff dead easy.
A good day and I still managed to get out for a bit of bouldering and photography in the evening as well.