Video Editing - Beginning
last update: 7 January 2023
We all collect the odd video, and I've got a few short ones, more like little clips, in my Photos collection.
But finally I decided to scan my small collection of old videocassettes.
I ended up creating 20 AVI videos from my old collection of cassettes, with files sizes varying between 218 MB and 2.48 GB. I also have one 1GB mp4 video, but I don't know why.
As far as I can tell:-
All the videos were taken in a period of 3-4 years ….
I used 2 different camcorders, one recording on full-sized VHS tapes, and the other recording on VHS-C (mini format)
I think I must have borrowed a camcorder that used full-sized tapes, and then I decided to buy a Panasonic that used the VHS-C format (post 1982)
I remember only using the video for a few years, since I found it too cumbersome to carry around, and I found that we never really looked at the videos (just put them away in a cupboard)
I remember giving the whole set (camera, travel box, new cassettes, etc.) to my Dad, but I don't think he used it very much either
Judging from the content I must have at one time tried to add titles and even compile several videos on to one tape
I only put the date on one video, so part of my problem was to figure out when and where I took the original video.
How did I digitise my old videocassettes?
I know that I left my old Hitachi video machine with my collection of cassettes in the garage for the best part of 20 years. I didn't want to use a professional digitisation service because I was not even sure what was on the cassettes (if anything). The first thing I did was to connect the old video machine to a TV screen to see if it worked. It worked, but I noticed that for some cassettes the tracking was a disaster. Also the quality of the video was poor by todays standards.
What to do with some AVI videos?
I ended up creating 20 AVI videos from my old collection of cassettes, with files sizes varying between 218 MB and 2.48 GB. I also have one 1GB mp4 video.
The first thing I want to do is convert the AVI into .mp4 videos, and secondly I want to extract clips of my wife, family members, friends, etc. I must admit most of the video content is just tourist video padding that I can delete. My aim was a series of shortish .mp4 videos which I could send to family and friends.
According to one independent review the best options are:-
Movavi Video Editor for Mac - has a free version and is an easy-to-learn editing tool.
Filmora for Mac - powerful video editing application with an array of advanced features.
Final Cut Pro - well-known professional video editor, stands out for its user-centered design.
iMovie - simple video editor with basic editing capabilities.
Kdenlive - open-source video editor characterised by simplicity.
Blender - open-source and free video editing software with great functionality.
Avidemux - open-source and free video editing software, whose main characteristic is user-friendliness.
My gut feeling was that iMovie was my best option because it's easy-to-use and I'm only interested in doing some very basic editing. And on top of that iMovie is the default video editor for Mac users, and it's free. But otherwise Avidemux might have been an alternative because of its user-friendliness.
Starting up with iMovie
I downloaded iMovie, which took ages (its 3.26GB). This gave me a few minutes to look around for some free introductory iMovie editing lessons. The one I found immediately was How to Use iMovie - Beginner's Guide.
However, I then discovered that iMovie does not support the format AVI, even if some "experts" wrote that it did. It's possible that it might support some "versions" of AVI, but in any case it did not support my AVI files.
What was the reason? According to an answer on Quora, and I quote,…
iMovie can import QuickTime (.mov), MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v), MPEG-2, MPEG-1, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AVCHD, DV, and AVI files containing MJPEG (motion JPEG) data.
AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a container format, i.e. a file that contains chunks of data that can be stored in a variety of ways. It was introduced by Microsoft in 1992, and it is based on the IFF file format developed by Electronic Arts for the Amiga computer in 1985. AVI was developed before modern video codecs and video compression, but it was designed to store arbitrary chunks of audio and video that your computer would have to figure out how to play by consulting a list of decoders that are installed on the computer. The thing about AVI is that the data stored inside it could be just about anything.
AVI has some drawbacks that make it difficult to use for modern video and video editing software:-
It doesn't have a standard way to represent time codes, so syncing audio and video is complicated.
It doesn't have a way to represent the aspect ratio of the video.
It wasn't designed to be used with video compression approaches where one frame is based on the frame that precedes it (like all modern methods)
It doesn't support the notion of variable bitrate (VBR) data, presuming that one can find a chunk of data by dividing the size of the video chunk by the duration.
The response to these limitations has frequently been to adding proprietary stuff into AVI that is handled separately by different companies that do it.
The practical upshot being that almost no video editing software supports AVI files generically, and all of them end up converting it to another format during the import process and using the converted version.
OS X doesn't really support AVI, or much of anything outside what the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standardises on. For the most part, that's just fine since that's pretty much what everyone else does today too.
If you'd like to convert the AVI files to H.264 (MPEG4), there's a wide variety of utilities out there that do just that. There's a good chance that VLC will read your AVI and convert it without a problem.
My version of VLC converted my 455.4 MB AVI file to a 278.4 MB .m4v format, which is an Apple MPEG-4 movie format that could be imported by iMovie. But the problem was that VLC converts the file to the m4v format using its default settings, and the result is that the video plays without the audio track using the default QuickTime Player (but plays properly in VLC). There is a posting that noted that changing "MPEG Audio" to "MPEG 4 Audio (AAC)" and doing the conversion again delivered video and audio on Quicktime, iTunes and VLC.
You can verify this by simply opening the "Info" window on a .m4v file and on a .mp4 file. The codex on the m4v file will be H.264 and the codec we want should be H.264, AAC.
How to change the audio codec on VLC?
On the Mac version, open VLC and go to Convert/stream… under File.
We can see that the profile is Video - H.264 + MP3 (MP4) which looks like it should do the job, but we know it does not. Converting an AVI file produces a m4v file (which can be renamed with the extension .mp4), but when played back with the QuickTime Player or dragged in to iMovie the audio track is missing (but the audio track is still there when using the VLC player).
The next step is to Customise…, which open options for selecting both the video and audio codecs.
Above we can see the video codec correctly set to H.264, and below we can see the audio codec.
Here it was originally set to MPEG Audio, but we changed it to MPEG 4 Audio (AAC). You need to "Apply" and "Save as a new Profile…". I gave this new profile the name H.264 + AAC, which was presented in the list of profiles as H.264 ° AAC.
Now when converting an AVI file I must select conversion to H.264 ° AAC, then give a new file a name and location in "Save as File", then Save. The conversion time by VLC will depend upon the length of the video. The file will now play with its audio track using the QuickTime Player, and can be imported into iMovie with its audio track. After conversion, the newly created file will indicate under "Get Info" that the codec is now H.264, AAC (and not just H.264).
And just to make life that little bit more confusing…
Above I have just explained how I converted an AVI video file to a mp4 file with its audio track. And that under "Get Info" the codec was now H.264, AAC (and not just H.264).
I also have one 1 GB mp4 file of trips we made to the US (1989-1991). I suspect that I must have compiled it at the time. Under "Get Info" the codec is simply H.264, and it plays with the audio track using the VLC player. However it plays without the audio track with QuickTime, and also without the audio track in iMovie. So how to correct that?
It would appear logical to use VLC to also convert my old 1 GB mp4 file to a new mp4 file with the H.264 + AAC profile. But what that does now is produce an 85.6 MB m4v audio file of the separate audio track taken from the original mp4 file, i.e. no video.
Back to iMovie
We now have worked out how to convert AVI files to mp4 (with the audio track), so we are ready to decide what to do with the new mp4 files.
My first step was to view the videos and identify key elements in the video, i.e. places, people, and if possible the date.
Next, I had a look at a few beginner "how to use iMovie" tutorials. I already mentioned How to Use iMovie - Beginner's Guide which I found far more interesting and complete than I had initially expected.
The next I looked at was Learn HowTo Use iMovie in 5 Minutes, which was a bit too quick, but was useful after having looked at my first tutorial video.
However, the next one was probably the one I should have looked at first, a 32 minute tutorial called iMovie for Beginners - Detailed Tutorial. I also found the 25 minute tutorial How to Use iMovie - 2022 Beginner's Guide and the 40 minute How to use iMovie in 2022 (Beginner's Guide).
However they all focus on dragging and dropping different media (e.g. videos, photos, etc.) into a timeline, to create a kind of edited "super video". What I was more interested in was different. Firstly, I wanted to delete the stuff I did not want/need, mostly blue screen or badly distorted parts. Secondly, I wanted to create a much shorter but useful video of what ever I had filmed, i.e. edit out the boring bits such a scans across walls or when I zoomed into a trivial detail. Thirdly, I want to also extract key bits (with my wife present), date and locate the bits, and group them into a separate timeline. Then did I want to put some kind of title on final clip, not sure?
https://www.cisdem.com/resource/vlc-wont-play-mp4.html
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/05/13/how-to-improve-bluetooth-audio-mac/