Need Help With Video File Types

[bdgbill]

I am a fairly serious photographer so I'm pretty comfortable with issues like aspect ratio, resolution etc but have done very little with video. I spent most of Christmas day trying not to bash my head against my desk trying to do simple things with video files. I thought this may be a good place to look for some help.

I have a Canon DSLR, several canon compact cameras, a Samsung Nexus phone, a GoPro Camera (thanks Santa) an iPad (wife) and an iPhone (also wife). All are capable of shooting video. The software I bought for working with video is Adobe Premiere Elements. Premiere will not accept files from most of the equipment listed above. I found myself having to run my files through several pieces of software before editing to convert them into something that Premiere Elements will work with and sometimes after editing to convert them into whatever Flickr or YouTube wanted. By the end of Christmas day my head was swimming with codecs and file types and wrappers and I was more confused than ever.

My questions are:

1. Is there a single file type that can be read by almost anything and posted almost anywhere with a decent balance between file size and quality? Some of the files I made were 2 minutes long and over 200 meg!

2. Is there a converter that will convert almost any video file to that format?

3. Does Premiere Elements suck? Is there something better (free or not)?

I'm not looking to become the next Spielberg here. I just want to be able to trim and string together clips from various sources and be able to use the result on the maximum number of devices and websites.

Thanks

[pcostanza]

1. jpegs and tif files are the most popular format and I rarely have a problem with them.
2. For video files, I've been using Freemake Video Converter. It's free and just works. VideoReDo is great too but not free. There was one called Super that was fast but I found it not as easy to use.
3. I don't know why but I have Adobe products and try to stay away from them.

I mod for the Roxio forum......well, Roxio is barely alive now. Went from Adaptec to being owned by Roxio, then Sonic, then someone else and now Corel owns them. Corel has some good products but they are all over the place.
My Mac friends laugh at me because they say they have the best software but none of it is free. My brother is a photographer and he uses Adobe everything. He does still and video and swears by it.

[bdgbill]

Thanks PCostanza - I'll have a look at programs you suggested. I use Adobe Lightroom everyday and love it and I'm pretty comfortable with Photoshop Elements as well but Premiere Elements doesn't really have any crossover. It may as well have come from another company. I have tried to use Super in the past as well and couldn't figure it out. A lot of people online suggest VLC Media Player for these things. The program does have a convert funtion but I ran into the same trouble. It asks you to choose a file type and a "wrapper" or "container". With all the options from these two selections, there are hundreds of possible combinations.

[whurlston]

1. H.264/AAC in an MP4/M4V container. Your iPhone, Pad, GoPRO and Nexus all capture in this format already and almost everything supports playback of them. The DSLR probably captures in RAW format (which would explain your 2min/200MB file) but it can be converted to MP4.
   
2. FFMpeg would be a simple way to compress your RAW files to H.264/AAC.
   
3. Adobe Premiere Elements has issues with MP4 (probably the most used format on the Net). See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/457257
   

Adobe makes great professional software although they've become very bloated over the years. The problem with Premiere though, is that they really expect you to be working with pro grade video in RAW/AVI and don't support much in the way of consumer grade formats.

[Reddwarf]

I have tried Adobe Premiere and I would agree that it sucks. I'm currently using Corel Video Studio, it's not the fastest I'v worked with but it gets the job done. The Ulead family of video and dvd authoring software is not bad either, they have fully functioning trial versions you can download to try.

[ACTCMS]

I use a 12 year old Samsung DigiMax 430 still camera which also does 30 fps video with audio in an AVI container. At first I had problems editing with ULead or Pinnacle until I started to convert the clips to mpeg using the editing software which came with the camera. Then I use ULead or Pinnacle to edit and output mpeg or DVD. Being a boring old fart I don't need to watch my home movies on anything other than NPVR or PC.

Alex

[bdgbill]

I have asked this question in a few different places and it really does seem that there is no single piece of software that will take video from the camera through editing and generate a final product. This seems so surprising in this day and age.

[Graham]

I tried various softwares and settled on Corel Videostudio (formerly Ulead Videostudio) for making short amateur videos from the hours of recordings that I bring back from my outings. Their site says ...

This article lists the supported Input/Output Devices in VideoStudio Pro X5.

Supported Input/Output Devices


1394 FireWire® cards for use with DV/D8/HDV™ camcorders
Support for OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394
USB Video Class (UVC) DV cameras
Analog capture cards for analog camcorders (VFW WDM support for Windows XP and Broadcast Driver Architecture support for Windows Vista and Windows 7)
Analog and Digital TV capture devices (Broadcast Driver Architecture support)
USB capture devices: Web cameras and disc/memory/hard drive camcorders
Windows®-compatible Blu-ray™, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW,
DVD-RAM or CD-R/RW drive
Apple® iPhone®, iPad®, iPod classic® with video, iPod touch®, Sony® PlayStation Portable®, Pocket PC, smartphones

at http://corel.force.com/index/articles/en...000000L4U5

Plus there is this ...

http://corel.force.com/index/articles/en...000000L4UA

There is a full function free eval available.

[Reddwarf]

I tried various softwares and settled on Corel Videostudio (formerly Ulead Videostudio) for making short amateur videos from the hours of recordings that I bring back from my outings.

There is a full function free eval available.

And it can capture directly from my older Canon camcorder with firewire interface.