Power Kite Forum - GoPro video editing and conversion

GoPro video editing and conversion

MikeDobbs - 6-2-2012 at 07:11 AM

Hey everyone- I have two questions regarding video editing and posting.

1.
My GoPros shoot in a compressed format which I cannot use with Final Cut Express (the editing program I work with). As a result, I need to convert the files to DC. Problem is, I can't seem to do it without loosing quality. I shoot in 960p, but the best I seem to be able to get after conversion in 480p. Anyone have a good (free) program to recommend for the conversion?

2.
My finished video looks great on my computer, nice and crisp, good resolution (even though not as high as I would like), but when I upload it to YouTube it gets degraded somewhat. How do I fix this? When I look at other PKFer vids on YouTube (John Holgate, Tod, etc) they have really excellent quality. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Kober - 6-2-2012 at 07:18 AM

I have no problem getting footage to Final Cut in original format...
Todd is using a lot his full size HD camera and color editing software ,,,,,

MikeDobbs - 6-2-2012 at 07:42 AM

Kober- you use Final Cut with GoPro footage?

Are you using pro or express?

If you're using the format that comes out of the Gopro do you have to constantly render everything?

doddg - 6-2-2012 at 09:41 AM

I downloaded a free conversion, Mpeg Streamclip and use that to convert to what ever I want and then export to Final Cut Pro. If you dont when you remove your camera you also remove your media source. With multiple cameras, I put the main one on the time line along with the audio, , render then lock em, and then add the rest and do little mini renders as I go. Pretty easy in FCP...

Hope that helps.

PHREERIDER - 6-2-2012 at 09:53 AM

curious my self, all the HD seems SUPER TIME consuming with a mountain of rendering. i certainly don't know any better. MAC imovie, in and out quick can give jellyfishy/pixelated stuff if stretched.

the final cut thing seemed more tool than i needed.

ALSO , what do you guys do with the projects, SAVE the final movie , throw away the raw file footage, i've thrown away bunch of raw footage stuff.. really don't know what i should keep and what i should trash. currently just throw it ALL away except for the finished document. not sure? and boy does it piles up!

once its converted all goes smooth best i can tell. some of the REAL editors will know more.

MikeDobbs - 6-2-2012 at 10:13 AM

doddg I used MPEG streamclip for this last round on conversion as well- but it seems that the most I can get out of that program is 720x480p. Have you been able to get higher res vids than that? If so, any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

PHREE I struggle with the same thing. Currently, my feeling is that you should toss raw footage and keep final cuts, but I have yet to throw out any raw footage as I haven't yet filled up my external 1TB drive :rolleyes:

I was thinking yesterday that it might be good to hang on to any really choice shots in a sort of "best of" folder somewhere to make a super cool vid someday : )

stetson05 - 6-2-2012 at 10:48 AM

This was discussed a while ago and I recently looked it up.

http://www.powerkiteforum.com/viewthread.php?tid=16181

I have tried a ton of different things. Avidemux works well when I finally got it to work. It seemed to do pretty well with the conversion but took a while of course. I also tried going to CNET and downloaded a H.264 codec pack for windows media play and movie maker but I wasn't very happy with that. There are a bunch of extra things it tried to load on my computer. It did work ok. AVS4YOU works really well and seems to have a bunch of tools but costs about $70. Of course after all my work I couldn't save until I paid.

To complicate for me I am using a HD and SD gopros so my overall resolution isn't going to be that great. This is my edit from downloading the codec pack and using windows live movie maker. Video shot from the board is SD

PHREERIDER - 6-2-2012 at 12:29 PM

nice Gabe!,

not sure at all about the computer stuff , imovie or WMM . i have used both on a basic level and it SEEMS fine.
this ain't no RED ONE event and all i try to do is stay within the limits of the camera. the extra software stuff can get $$$...really couldn't justify it ,IF SOMEONE brought a stout PRO camera MAYBE, (more so than the ride along gopro units which seem fine to me).
super high quality needs great light, super close action, good/stable framing and a (hit TON of flybys. a rare person that comes and hangs with me all day doing the camera thing... wife did it twice, like 2years ago.,

DOBBS , the upload can degrade some quality but if u start with HD and finish HD, its super dense and comes off nice. and the file thing , i just get throw away happy and let it all go...i can always make more.

Kober - 6-2-2012 at 04:45 PM

Mike ....
I am importing footage to iMovie from camera with Analyze and Stabilization option on ...... in full original resolution .... 32GB card on my MacPro takes around 12hours to do so ....
....Most of time I import footage when going to sleep so computer can use all power to work on it ....
After footage is in iMovie its easy to pick you clips that you want use for project .... after you have all best clips selected .... move them to Final Cut for final editing ......
....

Kamikuza - 6-2-2012 at 05:22 PM

I'm going to be blunt so please don't take offense :D

1. No it doesn't - raw h.264 (or whatever HD video is) is what gets recorded. A compressed format would be something like a Div-X .avi...
If your editor is not handling the file, then it may not have the filters for either the video (unlikely IMHO) or the audio (which does issues with Vdub) and so you may need to convert it. You SHOULD be able to convert the audio only without mangling the video - a "direct stream copy" in most software.

2. It's best to compress or convert your files as few times as possible... or not at all. It's like photocopying...
Again IMHO you should be able to work in your editor with the original HD files and whatever soundtrack you want, then spit out a YouTube ready HD file. My PC is a Core2Duo 3Ghz thingy with 4Gb of RAM and it runs Vegas fine for editing... rendering still takes a while though!

Your problem is first you're resizing or compressing the video to 480p which is just nasty :lol:

sounds like there's a demo limitation on your software that'll only allow non-HD work... also fairly common

When you render your file (ie. save it to disk) there will be options you can control to improve the quality. Usually... Windows Live Movie Maker has very simple options but they're still available. Other software, I don't know and especially don't know Mac (yuch) ...

My advice - get Vegas. It's a bit tough to learn but you get total control over what it's doing and eventually, it's easy to use. And rock stable. And it seems like you can handle the timeline layout so you should click with it well.

@phree - yes, I know what you mean... I'm going to get a couple of terabytes worth of external drive and just dump all my GoPro on that...

Kamikuza - 6-2-2012 at 05:28 PM

Oh to add a trick...

If you have trouble editing original HD files eg. makes your PC run slow and it takes too much time to trim, edit etc THEN (and only then :lol:

) convert your files and work with low rez 'dummies' and swap them before you render. It's easy with Vegas...

For example...
GoPro001.mp4 is the original file. Resize, compress or whatever and make is low rez and small... call it GoPro001-SMALL.avi
Meddle with it in Vegas etc and save the project then either delete the GoPro001-SMALL file which will force your editor to ask you where the file is - and point it at the full HD file then render.
Or... delete GoPro001-SMALL and rename (a copy of) the original HD file GoPro001-SMALL

stetson05 - 6-2-2012 at 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kamikuza
Oh to add a trick...

If you have trouble editing original HD files eg. makes your PC run slow and it takes too much time to trim, edit etc THEN (and only then :lol:

Clever! I am thinking about vegas. I wonder if the Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 is good enough at $44.95 or if I should splurge and get Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 for $94.95 I wonder if it really is that much better than AVS4YOU?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

I hate to pay more, but the more time I spend editing and not getting what I want. If I waste enough time, it will make it worth the better program.

Kamikuza - 6-2-2012 at 08:45 PM

I actually think there's a legit free version of Vegas around - version 8 or something...?
Don't know anything about those 2 versions - might pay to find a comparo. I have 11 Pro I think... the advantage of Vegas is that it's something of a standard for NLVE and there are mountains of tutorials specifically for it on YouTube etc... and plug-ins!

Todd - 6-2-2012 at 10:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kamikuza
m going to be blunt so please don't take offense :D

My advice - get Vegas....

running 10pro hear and I kid you not it takes less than 15minutes max to render. I'll throw this offer out to anyone wanting to try SONY Vegas , I'm just a phone call away for help. I'm no pro but will lend you a hand. YouTube search SONY Vegas on how to... and see how much neat stuff shows up.

Kamikuza - 6-2-2012 at 11:13 PM

How much are you rendering at what quality and on what hardware, Toddy?

MikeDobbs - 7-2-2012 at 06:24 AM

Thanks everyone for the help.

Kami- no offense taken. One point though- I may have been mistaken about H.264 being a "compressed" format- but nonetheless it is not a format Final Cut works with. Final cut is a powerful, but finicky program, and due to the nature of its "non destructive editing" it only works with .DV and AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) files. That's not to say you can't use other file types in Final Cut, but you have to render them with every change for playback- so it's basically impossible.

HOWEVER, you're "trick" about swapping out low res for high res gave me an idea. Turns out, that after I do all my editing with my converted .DV files, I can swap them out and point the program to the original H.264 HD files with the same file names. I have to render the entire video to watch it, but only once! Only thing is my editing window is still locked into 480p. Just got to figure out how to change that and I think I'm home free!

Drewculous - 7-2-2012 at 06:56 AM

Im I little late.... But pretty much second everything kami said... Converting/compressin/decompressing of video/audio.... Always bad.... Bad bad bad.. You will always lose something on your final end... Someyimes you cant work with the raw file, but the fewer alterations to the original file, the better...

And +1 for vegas... Bloody expensive, but wow.... Its good

Can you post link for legit version? Did not know there was a free copy out there, that didnt have to be cracked..

One final thought... If you are going to run lots of videos, in hd esp.... Get more internal hard drive space... Terabyte hard drives are getting cheaper every day.... If you have the e extra space, 500gig drives are cheap... Interal storage is a must

zero gee - 7-2-2012 at 10:40 AM

Mike,

You could try to change your settings for <EASY SETUP> in FCE to match your MPEG Streamclip transcoded clips. It sounds like that is where your 720x480 problem may be.

This might help sort out your issues...
http://goprouser.freeforums.org/converting-4-3-to-16-9-go-pr...

Kamikuza - 7-2-2012 at 05:29 PM

Ah, now you mention it in the finicky context, it reminds me that I've heard that before on the goprouser forum too... FC is a Mac program yeah? (snicker)

Don't know the link sorry - just noticed it when I was searching for tutorials, someone said "free version" and I was like oh ok then :lol:

arkay - 7-2-2012 at 11:16 PM

i've had good luck with vdub for the video side of things. i import the raw footage into mpgvdub and deshake the scenes. At this point i usually just encode to a high bitrate mpg4 codec then import into my editor. once re-encoded the files will work with just about any editor; I've had no problem with final cut, vegas, avid, windows live :D, and a bunch of others. sure you technically lose some quality, but with a high bit rate unless you're going to put it on a huge hi-res screen the loss is very minimal.

If you have mpg format issues, I've had good luck using MP4Cam2AVI to fix up the mpeg containers

John Holgate - 7-2-2012 at 11:25 PM

Quote:

Hey everyone- I have two questions regarding video editing and posting. 1. My GoPros shoot in a compressed format which I cannot use with Final Cut Express (the editing program I work with). As a result, I need to convert the files to DC. Problem is, I can't seem to do it without loosing quality. I shoot in 960p, but the best I seem to be able to get after conversion in 480p. Anyone have a good (free) program to recommend for the conversion? 2. My finished video looks great on my computer, nice and crisp, good resolution (even though not as high as I would like), but when I upload it to YouTube it gets degraded somewhat. How do I fix this? When I look at other PKFer vids on YouTube (John Holgate, Tod, etc) they have really excellent quality. Any suggestions?

Hi Mike. My last laptop was a gutless 2ghz Celeron that could not even play the gopro .mp4 files (.mp4 is a compression routine - so yes, the files are already compressed) and my editor at the time was Corel VideoStudio X2 - which also could not handle the .mp4 files.

I used Cucusoft utlimate video converter ($30 or so - I think) to convert all the files to .mpeg so my computer and editor could handle them. What a giant pain in the a$$.

I have recently got a 2.4ghz i5 machine which is far, far, far better and can play the .mp4 files smoothly. VideoStudio X4 is also much faster and able to deal with the .mp4 files - although I did have to upload a 'patch' for X4 for it to work with the .mp4 files. VideoStudio does what Kami was talking about - it makes lo-res versions of the files so the editing goes quickly on a slower machine, then it swaps them for the original files when rendering. They're called Proxy files. A neat idea and you can control at what size the software decides to make them.

If you upload a good file onto youtube, it should stay at that quality. If I upload a 720p file for instance, youtube gives me the choice to watch it in 240p, 360p, 480p or 720p - the controls for which are at the bottom of the viewing window - make sure you haven't got it set for 240 or 360.

I'm not familiar with Final Cut Express - I believe it's been discontinued ? Some of the Mac guys here are using Final Cut Pro and don't have any difficulty using the original .mp4 files.

I keep all my original files on a hard drive - $100 odd bucks for a year or two's worth of gopro files.....buy a new drive when full...not too expensive. And you never know what clever software will pop up around the corner that may do wonders with your original files. Worth keeping.

Give iMovie a whirl. Or Premier Elements - you should be able to download a full working trial version. Definitely get software that will work with the native gopro files because converting/re converting is such a waste of time.

Try the cucusoft ultimate converter too. You'll find it here: Cucusoft ultimate video converter (don't know about the .dv files, but there's plenty of other compression formats out there. Here's a trick that worked for me before I got the patch to fix X4 - I simply renamed my .mp4 file extensions to .mov - VLC and Videostudio both seemed to accept the file then - the .mov files seemed to be associated with Quicktime player and Apple stuff mainly. No idea how or why that worked but it did!

Kamikuza - 8-2-2012 at 01:38 AM

Aw heck - I thought I had a pretty good handle on what file formats were :no:

I'll shut up now :lol:

John Holgate - 8-2-2012 at 03:10 AM

Quote:

Aw heck - I thought I had a pretty good handle on what file formats were :no:

I'll shut up now :lol:

LOL! My grip on it all is tenuous at best! But I am VERY, VERY experienced at swearing at the computer!!!

MikeDobbs - 8-2-2012 at 07:06 AM

:singing: Wow thanks everyone for the help! I'm pleased to announce that from all of your suggestions I have worked through the issue and will now be able to produce full HD video as well as cut down on my editing/rendering time substantially! :singing:

Here's what I found to work (for anyone else using FCE4 like me): Use something like MPEG STreamclip to convert the raw GoPro footage into .DV files. This shouldn't take all that long, especially if you convert them to a lower res format- which (thanks Kami) is exactly what you should do. Then, I edit these smaller vids in FCE4. Since they are all .DV files, I can do all my edits without needing to do any rendering. Finally, once all editing is done, I simply move the location of those smaller DV files to another folder. The software immediately notices they are gone and asks me to find them. I just point it to the folder with the raw HD footage in it, then render for about 35 minutes and I'm good to go!

Very little conversion or rendering time, and I get a final product with the full resolution I'm shooting in! (Which in this case is R4, 1080x960) (Kober- this might save you a ton of time by avoiding the iMove import then export to Final Cut)

Check out my first HD video (you have to click through to YouTube to see it in HD):

cheezycheese - 8-2-2012 at 08:21 AM

Nice Mike, can definitely notice the improvement, even though I am watching on my phone. It looks like 4:3 ratio though. It won't play in full screen like the low res version did... :dunno: but once again, I am viewing on my phone.

MikeDobbs - 8-2-2012 at 08:50 AM

Thanks Cheezy! Yeah- I don't seem to be able to click the box to "allow on mobile devices" for this video. Is it possible that YouTube doesn't allow HD vids to stream to phones?

As for the aspect ratio, it is something of a red headed stepchild. I shot this footage using setting R4 on the GoPro, which records in 1080 x 960. This is roughly 1.125, as opposed to about 1.78 for 16:9, or about 1.33 for 4:3. According to the GoPro manual this setting gives the most vertical coverage, so I've been using it since my kite is up in the air, and the buggy is down on the ground.

When I went to Final Cut I worked in 1440 x 1080 (which is 4:3), and that's the reason you see some black lines above and to the side of the video. I plan on experimenting with other settings on the GoPro in the future, so you may see some 16:9 footage rolling out of Long Beach soon :yes:

cheezycheese - 8-2-2012 at 09:28 AM

I saw it in hd on my phone Mike. I had to go to your YouTube page and open from there...

Kamikuza - 8-2-2012 at 05:26 PM

Nice and crisp - good job! :thumbup:

Black border top and bottom - it's got something to do with your project rez being one thing and the video being another. I think... my confidence in my video skillz has been shaken :lol:

With Vegas, you start a new project then set its properties - there's a little button that lets you scan the source files and set the project details to match eg. rez and framerate... easy. Can get a bit tricky when you mix camera and sources though...!
Black border on the sides - not much you can do except trim the top and bottom of your video to fill the frame... which kinda defeats the purpose filming in 'tall' doesn't it

So I did some reading about formats - what my mistake was is thinking about the files from the GoPro as being raw data, like off stills camera :D to me they're 'raw', as in "not re-compressed or resized or anything". Which isn't the same as RAW camera footage... which is still processed a little anyway :-/ bah!

Todd - 8-2-2012 at 07:28 PM

Kami I can't remember all that Jazz and will have to look it up on the next render. However I did post up in this thread of what you just mentioned about the setup for Vegas before you begin editing.

Here

Great video BTW

BeamerBob - 8-2-2012 at 07:36 PM

I'm going to have to restart at the beginning. Compression, rendering, stabilization, final edit, I'm sure my videos are like fingernails on a chalkboard to those of you that know what you are doing.

MikeDobbs - 8-2-2012 at 07:41 PM

Thanks Kami! :smilegrin:

I'm very happy with the final product, and the new process which seems like it will make the whole process much simpler in the future. The black bars are a drag, but as you said, it's the price I pay for using R4 on the GoPro. I'll have to try shooting in some more standard rez with the GoPro and see how it comes out. I'm just nervous that the one time I try it something awesome will happen just above the camera :o

Kamikuza - 8-2-2012 at 09:09 PM

Good one Todd, just what we needed!

It's MHO that 60fps 720 (R3 IIRC) is the best quality in terms of stable image etc but 1080 is certainly the biggest :lol:

I get a bit of jellyfishing with it at times, but I haven't used it for so long - cos I prefer how 960 gets such a 'tall' view on film

I like seeing the kite too...

But I'm probably wrong :lol:

John Holgate - 9-2-2012 at 02:42 AM

Quote:

The black bars are a drag, but as you said, it's the price I pay for using R4 on the GoPro.

Shoot in R2 and just fly your kite lower !!!!

Quote:

It's MHO that 60fps 720 (R3 IIRC) is the best quality in terms of stable image

Me too - the 60fps is silky smooth on the original footage but the test videos I've uploaded to youtube seem to go back to 25/30fps making me doubt that youtube will actually play it in 60fps. Anyone?.......