converted analogue video

donhargreaves wrote on 3/21/2011, 12:22 PM

After downloading an analogue tape via a sony DCR TRV 460E PAL camcorder and firewire to my Vista Home Premium computer, I am presented with one movie without scenes. After running automatic scene recognition seperate scenes are still not present. Timeline mode splits the movie into one minute chunks but no editting is possible. I downloaded the tape to Windows Movie Maker and that worked perfectly.

Comments

cpc000cpc wrote on 3/21/2011, 7:25 PM

donhargreaves,

 

First, the Sony site and others describe your camera as 'Full-featured compact Digital 8 Handycam', which I'd already suspected if you are downloading via firewire.

 

Scene recognition works for me in both MEP14+ and the much newer VPX2.5 -- is yours not finding any scenes at all or not cutting at the correct places? More information would be helpful: What is the format of your imported movie eg file type stored on your computer? What version of MEP are you using? When you say 'no editing is possible' is that because of the division into tiny chunks, or that absoutly no function works eg moving a piece to a new location or applying some effect?

 

Cutting in MEP is 'non-destructive' -- you might try taking one of your one minute chunks onto a new timeline and drag out its ends to restore what had been cut off.

 

Is it possible to download using Movie Maker and then move the material (from wherever it is stored on your hard drive) into MEP?

 

Sorry no immediate fix,

Carl

donhargreaves wrote on 3/22/2011, 5:28 PM

ccp000cpc,

 

Thanks for the reply.

Trying to take a one minute chunk just drags the whole movie to another timeline.

"open using MEP" from hard drive produces the same effect as importing from camcorder i.e. no scene detection.

The movie is stored on the hard drive as a folder, explore produces a second folder and a small MSWMM file, the second folder explores to  a large microsoft video file and two small files, avi.AVD and avi.HDP

I am using MEP 14 Pro Versiom 7.5.2.11

 

Don

cpc000cpc wrote on 3/22/2011, 6:39 PM

Don,

 

First, the .AVD and .HDP files are created by MEP whenever any video is used. The HDP is what hold the display of the audio track. They can be deleted and will get re-created if needed. I suspect the MSWMM file is for Windows previews etc.

 

If dragging a 'chunk' moves everything it seems your video has not been cut into pieces at all. If the pieces are separate you should be able to select by clicking on one, have it change background color, and be able to move it independently of the rest. Are you confusing separate pieces with simple markers which happen to be a minute apart at the default zoom level? Try this: If you place the play cursor in the middle of your video and hit the [T] key to 'split' does a new division show? Each half should have its own box icon at top center and two at the ends -- these are adjusting overall video level and for fade-in and fade-out. 
 

 

The above shows (if you click on it to see it all!) a clip which has one [T] key cut to make two pieces. The one on the right has been 'selected' so it is hi-lighted. At its top are six little markers where scene detection has noted a change in the video, but I did not go further to have those cuts made. The vertical lines are currently at one minute intervals but that would change if I zoomed into the timeline. How does this compare with your view?

 

Scene detection of some digital material is based on 'time stamps' which might not be recognized on your video, but the detection based on change in image should work. Have you tested with a piece of video from some other source?

 

Hope this helps some,

Carl

donhargreaves wrote on 3/27/2011, 12:11 PM

Carl,

 

Scene detection isn't working at all. I tried loading some videos I had loaded from my Panasonic Digital camcorder via Pinnacle movie editor. I had edited the files with Pinnacle but that stopped working when I "upgraded" from XP to Vista. Perhaps I should uninstall MEP and reload it?