Camarillo Air Show 2005 videos

[evangilder]

Here is a start for the videos that I shot at Camarillo this year. I shot almost 2 hours worth of footage. I am in the edit process now. I will post as I go.

First one is the Ventura County Fire Dept helo doing a water drop.

The second one is the Wildcat and the Zero doing a mock dogfight and then a photo pass, in formation.

Enjoy. No soundtrack this time, you get to hear the engines! 8)

 

[Gnomey]

Nice videos evan! Wildcat vs Zero one is cool!

 

[evangilder]

Thanks. I have more on the way. Some other things have taken priority over videos at this time. I will post more soon.

 

[evangilder]

I see the wildcat and zero clip was popular! 2 more for you. This time the B-25 "Executive Sweet" doing flybys and a landing. Notice how fast the bomb bay door open.

The second clip is 2 of the Grumman cats that were at the show, the Wildcat (FM-2 in Martlett colors) and the F8F Bearcat flying together, then singularly and landing. The Hellcat had braking problems and could not be safely flown.

Both of these are from Saturday's show.

 

[Nonskimmer]

I look forward to seeing these, and I'll be sure to download and look at them tomorrow sometime. My PC is going through it's monthly cycle.
It's being a real bitch too!

 

[Royzee617]

Excellent - nice to see someone else's vids!
Thanks.

But what is your secret for making the wmv look so good and yet so small? It drives me nuts that I cannot get the clips from decent looking (but big) mpg files to small wmv without all the 'clipping and tearing' on the edges.

I use Stoik Vid Converter to convert from mpg to wmv - what do you use? Maybe I can do that and improve my clips?!

 

[evangilder]

Thanks Roy. I use Roxio Easy Media Creator. I always import into the computer using firewire and store it initially as an AVI. It makes the import huge (50 minutes of video is about 12-15 Gig on the HDD), but the quality is really good. Roxio allows you to separate the video into clips, which makes for easier editting.

Once I get all the editting done, I save the project and have a bunch of different options for outputting the project. For posting to the web, I set it up for WMV with a variable bit rate. The variable bit rate is what makes a big difference as it compresses "part" of the video, if that makes sense. Either way, it's the best balance I could find between quality and size. I still don't care as much for the quality, but when compared to the DVD authoring output, nothing is good.

 

[Nonskimmer]

Great videos.

 

[Gnomey]

Nice videos Evan!

 

[evangilder]

Thanks guys. More to come.

 

[Royzee617]

Blimey Evan, that's a lot of hard work so we need to thank you even more!

I tried connecting my DV camcorder via firewire etc some time ago (all-digital) but it overwhelmed the PC I had back then.

My way is cruder - from the VCR into the Hauppage TV card DVD quality compressed mpeg2 I think) which looks pretty good and very little if any of the edginess and jags. The latter only turn up when I convert to the wmv using Stoik or MM.

So do you use Roxio Easy Media Creator for the wmv to web compression?

I will look out for variable BRC on my stuff in the MW.

Maybe next week I will get a new video card... but all these things have a learning curve.

 

[evangilder]

Not quite, Roy. I do all the edits to the raw AVI and then set the output to whatever format I want. It took a little trial and error to find the balance. The nice thing is that I can move the clips around, adjust the length of each clip and shift them around even. Once I save the project, then I still have the original raw AVI dump for the next batch of clips.

It does take some work, but I think it's worth the final output. The way it ends up on the schedule, you could have the Mitchell pass, then the bearcat, then something else a few times. So what you end up with is a lot of small clips in a funky order. That's why the software is great for me.

 

[lesofprimus]

Great stuff evan....

 

[Royzee617]

OK Evan - I am still wondering exactly how you achieve the avi to wmv concersion - I presume Roxio has some option for 'saving for web' etc?

Personally all I have time to do is transfer the footage from the VCR to wmv and post it on the web. I tried video editing a while back and found it took up too much time. I know it is 'creative' but I really just want to share the video even though sometimes it could do with a bit of tidying up. In fact when I submitted some to FL350 they got turned down (I think) because they were a but too 'raw'. The furthest I got was with Windows Movie Maker putting in titles etc.

 

[evangilder]

I played with Windows MOvie Maker for a while and while it has some nice features, it is a bit cumbersome. The output to DVD is just plain crap. The static parts of the video are good, but anything moving has a pixelly border that makes it look fuzzy.

The way Roxio does it is after you save your "production", you have an "Output to" function. Then you select the type you want it to be in (avi, wmv, mpg, etc). It runs the conversion and outputs the file.

I don't normally convert VHS files with a few exceptions that I have done for archive purposes. Roxio has a couple of wizard type functions to create a production that walks you through a set of steps and takes you all the way up to burning it to DVD.

 

[Royzee617]

Hmm, interesting. Makes me wonder if I should buy Roxio. Can you adjust the type of wmv then? I suppose so.

 

[evangilder]

I'm not sure what you mean by adjust the type of WMV, but you can tell it to use variable bit rate (which is what I use for posting), low bitrate, which is pretty poor quality or high, which is nice, but large. You also have mpg and a few others. I don't remember for sure, but I don't think it can do quicktime formats.

I like this one the best of the ones that I have tried, but I will warn you that it is a resource hog. You need a good processor and lots of memory. I am using a 3 Ghz machine with 2 Gig of RAM and it's just fine, but I have not attenpted anything with less horsepower.

 

[Royzee617]

Argh - that's a bit more resources than I have here et the moment.

I knew vid processing was a hog but.... hmm maybe I will stick to the tried and trusted (?). Many thanks.

 

[evangilder]

I am not sure what the minimum requirements are, I just know it works for me. It may work well on a less powerful machine, I just haven't tried to.

 

[plan_D]

I just watched the videos, evan. They're excellent. I loved the B-25. I was wondering, how do they get these birds around the world? Are they shipped?