Processing and Hosting Video Clips

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

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Cactusdave
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Processing and Hosting Video Clips

Post by Cactusdave »

I have begun to take some short videos of protists etc inspired by some of the excellent video clips I've seen on this site. I've got a couple of questions. I don't want to get into heavy video editing, but what program would people recommend for basic editing, colour correction, noise reduction and so on. Secondly what video hosting site to use? Most people seem to use Youtube, but I've heard complaints abought the quality and compression methods used even for HD video clips. Is Vimeo worth the fee? I've heard quality and compression methods are better.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

zzffnn
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Post by zzffnn »

Dave,

I use VSDC Free Video Editor for Windows. It does still capture, video background brightening, sharpening and contrast enhancement.

Kinovea can trim videos on Windows PC - as long as you remember to "lock" the "working zome". It can also split a video into hundreds of still photos for stacking, though still quality is so-so (likely due to compression).

On a Mac, If I only need to trim a video, I use Mac's Realtime Player. My Realtime Player came for free on our Mac (the free Windows version cannot trim video).

For capturing still photos from a video, I use VLC.

For splitting a whole video into sequence (hundreds) of still photos, I use Kinovea. Its resolution is not very high though.

I use YouTube for hosting my HD 1080p videos. Quality is fine at 1080p. I have not tried uploading to Vimeo. Full high resolution video may take a while to show up as 1080p, depending on your internet speed (it may show up as 720p initially, you need to pause video, set to 1080p in "setting" - "quality" then restart video from beginning - difference is quite visible between 1080p vs that at <720p).

You may ask Carlos Uruguay and 75RR. Carlos use Corel and Kinovea, on PC, for video editing, though that is not free. 75RR uses both YouTube and Vimeo. Francisco uses a film camera with recorder disc.
Last edited by zzffnn on Mon Jan 04, 2016 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Selling my Canon FD 200mm F/2.8 lens

Chris S.
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Post by Chris S. »

Dave,

You've probably noticed, but just in case, I'll mention that Vimeo does has a "basic" account that has no fee.

I've used Vimeo a very little bit, and in this limited experience, have been pleased. It seems a quieter environment than Youtube.

--Chris

spongepuppy
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by spongepuppy »

Vimeo's paid service is very good.

That said, YouTube offers a lot of functionality at a very low price ($0). In particular, I have been very pleased with their automatic stabilisation of my microscope videos which have some quite questionable stagework.

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li_pvHCcJtg
Youtube Stabilised: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kckg-050VCE

Bear in mind that you can disable most of the more terrible YouTube functions if you choose to embed videos elsewhere.

For instance, adding ?modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0 to the end of their embed URLs will reduce their branding, stop showing cat videos at the end and hide the text overlay:

Code: Select all

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https&#58;//www.youtube.com/embed/6Tj-X3YueDI?modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
gives you this: https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Tj-X3Yue ... showinfo=0
---
Matt Inman

Cactusdave
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Location: Bromley, Kent, UK

Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks for the helpful comments. I haven't decided what to use for a video hosting service yet. For video editing I have started to use MoviePlus X6 from Serif. It is inexpensive with frequent deals on it, and it seems to do most of what I want, including colour balancing, noise reduction and sharpening. It's also fine for the usual things like trimming and single frame extraction.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

zzffnn
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Post by zzffnn »

Dave,

How much is the X6 and can it join different video fragments together? I have not figured out what to use for joining videos. I can get all other functions that I need from free softwares.
Selling my Canon FD 200mm F/2.8 lens

Bushman.K
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Post by Bushman.K »

For certain tasks I'm using VirtualDub, which is completely free, but not really friendly, if you need to stitch fragments.
Getting rid of unwanted parts, transcoding, stabilization and other things are much easier to use.

Another editor I'm using from time to time is NCH Software VideoPad, which is free for non-commercial use. It supports VDub plugins, has relatively common interface with timeline and assets window. So, you can easily manipulate any number of clips within a project.

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