For this Fiesta, I chose to use a digital camera in video mode to take some movies. More than that, I wanted to convert these movies, which are stored in the camera in .mov (Quicktime) format into either .avi, wmv, or .mpg formats, for these formats are playable in Windows Media Player, as well as a number of other video players.
The Site:
The city of Kokomo, located directly north of Indianapolis in Howard County, was founded by David Foster, a trader and early settler in the area. This area was once wholy owned by the Miami Indians, but as settlers moved west, the Indians were forced to move onto a Miami Indian reservation, and the rest of the land was made available to settlers. In the 1840s, the Indians were moved out of the area and into Kansas.
Chief Kokomo was a figure of some renown in that day, and when David Foster founded Kokomo, he said " "It was the ornriest town on earth, so I named it for the ornriest man I knew -- called it Kokomo."
Legends abound about Chief Kokomo, including one where he wasn't even a chief. His burial site is in the city limits of Kokomo, and while I have lived here all my life, I had never personally gone to see it. I decided it was high time I did just that.
The Camera:
To shoot my videos, I used my daughter's Canon Easyshare CX7430. While this camera worked well to take videos for a newbie like me, I will say that it eats batteries like crazy. The next camera we buy will have to allow for better battery life. I drained 6 AA batteries to complete the videos for this project.
Primary Video:
I first shot a video of the monument itself, while at the same time giving some of the history of Chief Kokomo and the area.
One note on .mov format: This is a large file, coming in at about 20 meg for a 1:19 second video clip. I'm not terribly fond of the .mov format, and so I wanted to convert this file to a smaller file format. This, I was to find out, would take some doing. I didn't even bother to link the original .mov file to this site, as it is just too large.
Conversion:
To convert the .mov format into first .avi or .wmv (Which is Windows Media Player format) I used a program called River Past Video Cleaner. This program is available to download for a free trial for use with movies under 2 minutes. All movies converted with this trial version will contain a watermark. Download this from: http://www.riverpast.com/en/prod/videocleaner/
This program will convert video from 3G video (3GPP/3GPP2), ASF, AVI, DAT (VCD), DivX,
DV, FLC/FLI Flic animation, animated GIF, IVF, Matroska MKV, QuickTime
MOV, MP4 (MPEG-4), MPEG-1, OGG Media OGM, RealMedia RM/RAM, and WMV to
AVI, WMV, DivX, XviD, DV, MKV and OGM. With optional booster packs, you
can even convert to animated GIF, QuickTime MOV, and still images.
I so liked the trial version of this that I purchased it for $29.99. A very nice program!
Using River Past Video Cleaner, I converted my .mov file into .wmv. The .wmv format allows me some flexiblity for choosing the quality of the output file, so I could reduce the file's size. Converting to .avi file format creates a much larger file, and River Past Video Cleaner does not convert directly to .mpg. I have a program that will convert from .avi to .mpg, but I found out that .wmv format gives me the smallest file size.
The .WMV Video File
Okay, so here is the .wmv version of my movie. It's still larger than I'd like, coming in at 6.7 meg for a 1: 19 minute clip. I tried to reduce the size further by reducing quality, but I was dissatisified with the results. Until I figure out how to downsize it another way, this size will have to do.
Chief Kokomo Monument Video:
Video and History of Chief Kokomo Monument
Rotating Videos:
I also took some videos sideways through the fence, in an attempt to get the full monument in view while reading the text on the sides of it. I don't want to put sideways videos up on a website, and so, in addition to converting them .wmv, I wanted to flip these.The next two files are both under a meg. The original .move file was close to 4 meg.
Here is a .wmv verson of one of the original sideways files:
Sideways Video of the Monument
To rotate this video, I took the original .mov file, and I converted this file to .avi using River Past Video Cleaner, and then rotated it 90 degrees using a freeware program called VirtualDub, available for download at: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/
By opening my .avi file in VirtualDub, and then loading a filter to rotate it (under video-->filters-->add), I was able to rotate the video 90 degrees, and then convert it to .wmv using River Past Video Cleaner. A note on VirtualDub--I had to rotate the file using an .avi format, because VirtualDub won't edit either .mov or .wmv.
Here is the result of that process:
This file, in this format, is smaller than the .mov formated version, which is 3.66 meg. The .wmv version is under a meg. While reducing file size took some effort, if you are asking people to wait while files are downloaded into their buffer for viewing, it becomes apparent that size matters, and the smaller you can make your videos, the better.