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11-21-2010, 04:46 PM   #1
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Dealing with video clips?

How do others hear deal with video clips? I should note I've got a Mac.

I'm using Lightroom, and it courteously copies the videos off for me, but it can't do anything with them. It opens up QuickTime to display them, but QuickTime doesn't get beyond saying "loading movie...". If I browse to the folder in Finder and click on the movie, the preview thumbnail doesn't get beyond the spinner thing indicating it's creating a thumbnail.

With the Pentax software, I tried browsing to a directory containing a video clip... and it crashed the second I clicked on that directory. Not impressive crashing when generating thumbnails of only files that came out of a Pentax camera.

iMovie seems to handle them fine, but I'm just getting short clips for the memories, and it seems more complex than I'd like. I just want to preview to pick which ones to keep, and trim the ends if anything. If I have to use it I guess I will... but is there another option?

11-21-2010, 09:05 PM   #2
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You should just be able to download the video off the camera and view it with Quicktime. Try taking your SD card out of the camera and putting it in a USB, SD card reader and plug that into your Mac. The card should mount and you can drag-n-drop the video off directly.
11-21-2010, 11:44 PM   #3
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QuoteOriginally posted by torpesco Quote
How do others hear deal with video clips? I should note I've got a Mac.

I'm using Lightroom, and it courteously copies the videos off for me, but it can't do anything with them. It opens up QuickTime to display them, but QuickTime doesn't get beyond saying "loading movie...". If I browse to the folder in Finder and click on the movie, the preview thumbnail doesn't get beyond the spinner thing indicating it's creating a thumbnail.

With the Pentax software, I tried browsing to a directory containing a video clip... and it crashed the second I clicked on that directory. Not impressive crashing when generating thumbnails of only files that came out of a Pentax camera.

iMovie seems to handle them fine, but I'm just getting short clips for the memories, and it seems more complex than I'd like. I just want to preview to pick which ones to keep, and trim the ends if anything. If I have to use it I guess I will... but is there another option?
Most probably when you install K-Lite codec pack with media player all your problems will go away, because when installing it puts latest codes into your puter.

Other than pricey Adobe Premier, Windows movie maker is the best little editing software for cut, paste, add etc.

BTW both are free and can find them with a simple search on the internet.
11-22-2010, 12:53 AM   #4
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The OP has iMove. It doesn't get any easier than that. No matter what, if you are going to edit video, there is some level of work and understanding of the software.

11-23-2010, 08:49 PM   #5
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In Lightroom, my videos open up with the default media player, mine being SPlayer. I'd also give VLC player a go as it opens pretty much anything.
11-25-2010, 05:08 PM   #6
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Thanks for all the comments. I will double-check on the codec package -- I did run the installation CD that came with the camera, so I was surprised about the videos not opening with QuickTime or showing previews in Finder.

Worst case, I guess I can use iMovie for previewing the clips. It's not designed for that, though, so it's a bit of a pain. There are a few clips I know I just want to delete, but right now I have to import them into iMovie to even figure that out.

The best part is that if I try running the Pentax software and browse to a folder with the photos and movies, the software crashes.
11-26-2010, 12:06 AM   #7
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Discovered this issue this morning as both iPhoto and Aperture kept jamming up whilst trying to import an 800MB movie off the K-r.

AVI (the format the camera uses) is not native to the Mac environment. I ended up downloading a free app called MPEG Streamclip from (Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows which converts to various formats including the more widely accepted mpeg4.

11-28-2010, 12:15 PM   #8
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That's unfortunate about the avi codec being used by Pentax, as on my mac I've had the same experience of crashes when trying to use in most apps. I can convert each avi file to another format (mp4 preferably), but what a giant time killer.

I downloaded the above mentioned streamclip, but can also recommend handbrake for mac users: HandBrake
you can save presets and batch convert clips as well.
11-28-2010, 12:49 PM   #9
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.AVI is the container file, not the codec. The codec is MJPEG.

My Mac has no problems playing back K-r or K-5 files; I just double click the .avi file, it opens with Quicktime Player and plays back perfectly. I never installed any of the software for these cameras either. My Mac is running 10.6.4 by the way.

For editing, Final Cut Pro does not support these clips directly. (Which means you can import the clips but when laid on the timeline, they always have to render first to play.) The trick is to use Apple Compressor first, and batch convert the clips to Apple ProRes clips. The conversion is quite fast, and ProRes maintains the image quality.

iMovie seems to do a good job of importing these clips, but I haven't played extensively with it.
11-28-2010, 12:51 PM   #10
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By the way, converting to MP4 or MPEG formats will lose a lot of quality and take forever. Stick with an interframe-compressed codec, which is more like MJPEG. The quality will be better, it will be easier to edit, and the conversion will take less time.

MP4, MPEG2 etc, are delivery formats, not editing formats.
11-28-2010, 11:41 PM   #11
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QuoteOriginally posted by filmamigo Quote
Stick with an interframe-compressed codec, which is more like MJPEG.
Would you mind explaining which codecs do this? Not sure why AVI is giving me trouble in 10.6.4.

Edit: Should add that AVI plays in VLC fine for me – it's only Quicktime that's the issue. I am running Perian – perhaps I shouldn't be now?

Last edited by djb21au; 11-28-2010 at 11:56 PM. Reason: Additional info
11-29-2010, 04:18 AM   #12
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Answered my own question. The Perian support page (Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime components) suggests removing various outdated Quicktime components, some of which I had on board. Deleted the culprits and now AVI out of the camera opens instantly in Quicktime.

Then I went one further and removed Perian as well, and it still worked.

So my suggestion to others facing issues is to perhaps follow the Perian advice and delete any older Quicktime components, getting it back to where it started, and you should be good to go.
11-29-2010, 09:41 AM   #13
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Thanks for the suggestion filmamigo.

After removing divx encode and decode components (from HD/Library/QuickTime/) from djb21au's post, I was able to open the avi's successfully.
01-08-2011, 07:49 AM   #14
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I too was having the same trouble and it was solved by djb21au and bwy's advice. Thanks guys - a frustrating problem now solved!
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