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Editing Security Footage
I have someone who has provided me with a couple of CD’s of security footage. It says type: Video Clip, dimensions 320 X 240, duration 6:44, and it’s 670 megs.
I can’t get it to play in windows media player. But I can drop it on the timeline in Vegas Pro 8.0c and it will play OK (with that funky, jerky security cam look to it).
So here’s the problem, I rendered it to an AVI file so I could add a time code filter and then edit out the clips the customer wanted, and the AVI file plays back differently from the original file from the CD. The AVI sort of blends the action together so it looks sort of “ghost like”, as opposed to the jerky original security footage. My problem is that I need to provide the customer with footage that looks JUST like that jerky footage from the CD, and not the “blended together, ghost like” footage.I hope that I am describing this right. What settings do I need in order to make a file that looks exactly like the original CD footage (except that it includes a time code on it). Any ideas?
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3 Replies
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Odds are that the original video is running at less than 30 fps (15 fps is more like it and maybe even less).
Rendering it out to DV-AVI automatically make it 30 fps (29.97 if you want to get precise).
Get the correct frame rate by opening up Project Properties (File – Properties), click “Match Media Settings” (looks like a folder), browse to the folder where this footage is (you did copy it to your hard drive, right?), click on the file and click “Open”.
The frame rate and all other video information will be displayed on this tab.
Choose NTSC DV as the template but click Custom and then Video.
NTSC DV will not allow you to drop down to 15 fps so you’ll have to choose another codec in the video format box.
Try something like Microsoft Video 1 or Cinepak as this will allow you to choose 15 fps as a frame rate. -
Thanks so much for responding, Mike. So I did that and got the frame rate and other video information. It said it was 320 X 240, 2.000 fps. However, it seems that the lowest frame rate option is 12.000 for 1/2 film, and there is a 14.985 (half NTSC) and a 15.000 (multimedia). So there appears to be no option closer to the 2 fps this was produced in.
I need to render this out with a time code filter so we can edit out clips, and the customer needs it to be as close to the origonal as possible. Should I just try this at 15 fps and see what it looks like? Any ideas on how to handle this.
Thanks in advance!
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I “think” I have figured this out now, and am posting in case any others have a similar problem and want to know a “Fix” that works for this. The first problem was that I needed to render a file with a time code burn on it and I couldn’t find a frame rate option of 2 fps. So whatever I rendered did not play back showing the original 2 fps and it came out with the “fluid, ghost like” image as opposed to the standard “two snapshots every second” standard security cam look to it.
So what seemed to work was to render to AVI using default template (uncompressed), click on “Custom”, choose best quality, and under Video Options and highlight the Frame Rate which says 29.970 (NTSC) and put in 2.0, then change Field Order to None (progressive scan) and render the file.
That produced a file with the 2 fps I needed to match the “jumpy” security cam footage. But the next problem was in trying to convert edits from that file to a standard mpeg2 file I could use to create a DVD. When trying to make the mpeg2 file, I experienced the same initial problem; it just wouldn’t play back in the 2 fps mode. So the “final solution” seemed to be to convert the AVI file with the 2 fps into a high quality .wmv file. And I discovered that rendering the .wmv file to a standard mpeg2 actually worked! Good old trial and error method, definitely not skill ;-). Now there is probably a quicker, easier method to end up with a good mpeg 2 DVD, and I’d love to hear suggestions. But this process seems to have solved my problem.
Thanks again to Mike for his help!
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