jim p

I have an 808 video camera that died and I am getting an version 11 of this camera. My question is how do you manage the large video files. What are you guys doing with the files from go pro cameras and such?

Do I need to get some software that will allow me to edit the videos so that they can be made smaller?

digibud

If you do much at all with video you'll need an external hard drive or you'll add a drive to your tower. PC users have a few programs like Sony Vegas or the Adobe offerings as well as many other options. Mac users have iMovie, FCPx and possibly others that I am unaware of. You'll import the video and you may have to "transcode" the video if your computer is not fast enough to work with the original H264 files. The H264files require a faster computer than transcoded files but the H264 are roughly 8x smaller so a fast computer is a big help with video files. Even a new iMac or similar computer is plenty fast. You do need USB3 or Firewire or Thunderbolt, estata...almost anything but USB2.0.

jim p

I am still at the usb 2 level. I have an external hard drive that connects using a usb 2 port. My computer was automatically backing up on the external drive but I can't tell if it is even working anymore. I think that through the years my wife and I have tried 3 external hard drives and none of the drives worked or if they did work it was for a very short time.

I was hoping to find a way to store 4 gig files but it doesn't look like it is going to be easy and it may just not be practical.

sstorkel

My understanding, which is based on working with a guy who used to be an engineer on Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro is that none of today's video editing programs operate on H.264 directly. They all convert video, no matter what the origin, into an internal format that's optimized for editing, rather than space savings. Once you're done editing your movie, you can then export to H.264 for final playback. Most of my Go Pro-owning friends keep "important" movies saved in their editing program's native format however, since the conversion to H.264 is lossy. Less important movies get archived using H.264, for space savings. Most of these guys have multi-terabyte hard drives, or RAID arrays, for storing data.

contango 

The first question I'd ask is whether the video is worth keeping at all. It's very easy to take a "keep everything" position that leaves you endlessly needing more and more disk space to store videos you never watch and photos you never look at.

If you're shooting video from the bike, is the purpose to replay a particularly fast descent with performance metrics overlaid or is to to watch for asshat motorists who cut you off so you can report them to the police? If the former, edit out the bits either side of the fast descent; if the latter then delete it if you get home without being hassled.

JackoDandy

I use Windows Movie Maker to edit any GoPro files I want to keep. For 'saving space', I convert movies to the Xvid (Divx) format and a 2GB file is converted down to a 500mb file with little or no loss of quality. More info on Xvid:

https://www.xvid.org/

digibud

That is not correct. At least not for Final Cut Pro which I use regularly. When you import the files from the camera you end up with an H264 file on your hard drive. Final Cut only works on Macs so the H264 file is in a quicktime format. You can double click and open the file and play it within Quicktime just like any quicktime movie, however it is H264. An old mac might stutter playing the file. A less old Mac might play it, but the user might find problems with dropped frames in Final Cut Pro when he layered two tracks. Current iMacs would play it with no problem and allow you to lay multiple tracks with no problem up so some point. At some point even a new computer would begin to choke and you might need to optimize the media (convert to ProRes, which is roughly 8x the size as the H264). I would personally never convert to DIVX. Ever. But that's a judgement call.

JackoDandy

I disagree. The savings in storage space far outweigh the minor loss of quality.

digibud

Which is why I said "personally" and "judgement call". Converting to a low bit rate divx (or low bit rate H264) is like saving a high quality picture as a lower quality jpeg. Fine for sending to a friend but unless that quality is all you'll ever need, you may regret trashing the original.
For my uses, if it's worth keeping, it's worth having the original footage.
Here's a hokey family video for you done with FCP. It was done for family....thus the music choice....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqhJuorsQ5Y

jim p

I have another question for you video digital guys. My 808 version 11's files look like stop and go video when I am using a usb 2 port and a card reader to try to play the files. The audio is continuous with no pauses but the video is playing 1/4 sec then stopping 1/4 sec and then repeating. It is like it is having to load a buffer before it can play.

Do you think that if I load a file from my 808 to the hard drive that the video will play smoothly or is there something else going on?

ClydesMoose

Yeah, the throughput from the USB port is probably not high enough to play the video well. Its rarely a good idea to run editing off a usb 2.0 drive.

jim p

Thanks. I will load one of the small files to the hard drive and see how it does.

I had been reading something about different class cards and I didn't see a class listed on the micro card that I am using. The card is a sandisk microsdhc 8GB with a 5 year limited warranty.

jim p

I put a small file on the hard drive and it is still playing with all the pauses. I guess that my next step is to try the file on a better computer and see how it plays.

Does anyone have any other ideas.

I am also thinking that I may not be operating the camera correctly. I turn the camera on with the power on button and then I press the mode button and the indicator blinks 3 times rapidly and then goes dark while it is recording. The camera manual is in such small print that I need a microscope to read it.

JackoDandy

I "think" your talking about the '808' keychain type camera, right? If so, I have had decent success with the 808 and ANY SD card. I did play the files from the hard drive after copying over from the SD card. I also used the following player:

VLC - https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

Its free and awesome. Window Media Player can be finnicky at times. Try VLC and see what happens.

TrojanHorse

I've had issues playing certain file types when I didn't have the right codec loaded and the computer was converting on the fly. Try the VLC player referenced above.

Also, editing video is brutal on computers and not well suited to that discount laptop you may have picked up from Walmart on sale... Video is also highly dependent on data throughput so if your hard drive is small, slow and/or fragmented you could experience stuttering.

Do you know what your computer specs are? Processors? RAM? Drive types, interface types & size? if your computer has serial ATA connectors for the drives, you can EASILY and cheaply add another drive for more internal storage. If you have a Mac, don't ask me, ask digibud.

jsigone

I'm not too much into the video editing so just use window movie maker, its decent features are nice and free. I do have tons of photos and photos/data from my telescope.

Data Storage...LOL..... I have six 2TB HDD for storage in my tower (3 for storage, 3 are ghosted backups) + main drives is three Intel 530 Series 240GB SSD in RAID0 (love my Intel rep)

jim p

I started to download the vlc player and it starts giving me messages about not knowing the orgin of the program and asking if I am sure that I want to down load the program. So it scared me too much and I didn't do a down load.

Is it possible to up load a very short video somewhere so that you guys could take a look and see how it plays for you? I am thinking that a upload might not be a true representation of my raw file.

digibud

You are probably playing the original H264 file (or some other compression). The computer has to decode those frames on the fly in order to show them and that can be too hard for older computers. If you transcode to an uncompressed format each frame will be available to play without needing further unpacking so it may play perfectly smoothly at that point. I have a new top of the line iMac and it will play any H264 file I throw at it.

TrojanHorse

Get it from here: It's safe but maybe they didn't pay Microsoft for hardware certification. Honestly, it's a good thing you have a healthy dose of skepticism regarding internet downloads. I'm constantly cleaning up after my wife and kids (it seems)

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

jim p

I downloaded VLC and tried to play one of my files from the hard drive. The video showed one continuous picture while the audio played normal. This gives me some hope that the camera is working correctly but my computer is just not good enough to play the HD videos.

I think that my next step is going to see if I can get my nephew to try playing the files on his newer computer.

jim p

Problem identified. My BIL's computer plays the files perfectly. My old computer just does not have the capability to play the files.

So the next question is what would be the minimum or reasonable requirements of a computer to run the files?

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Technology is moving quickly and my average speed is around 10 mph.

Do you guys have any suggestion on where to pick up a used or refurbished computer that could handle the task?

JackoDandy

Hi Jim,

What's your budget? Unfortunately, gaming and video editing are the two most CPU intensive activities for any PC. I just picked up a Dell i7 XPS 8700 for $740 but I needed the horsepower for programming projects etc. If you can swing the $740 its a system that will last you a long, long time.

jim p

I am not going to spend much on a computer because my old boat anchor does pretty much everything that I need except for playing the HD videos.

I will just keep recording and one day when the price drops on the gaming and video power houses I will pick one up for cheap and then be able to watch the videos that I decided to keep.