Monday, December 25, 2006

My first video production

Close up of temple ritual at Dizang Nunnery

I rarely use the video function on either of my digital cameras. However, when I went to the temple festival in Xinzhuang on Saturday I determined to capture some of the events on video. There is so much action at these events that it is impossible to convey the entire experience with photos. The beating of the drums, blowing of horns and explosions of fireworks all contribute to the atmosphere.

Lined up in front of the temple

I took a little over four minutes of footage in four separate takes using my Nikon Coolpix 5200. None of the videos on their own were really very interesting and all included some messy bits. I decided to try and edit some of the better footage to make a short video.

I had never done this before, but it wasn't so hard. I have Windows Movie Maker which is included with Windows XP, but before I could start editing I had to convert the .mov files to .avi. I did this by downloading a free program called RAD Video Tools. The conversion was fairly simple although the .avi files had an extremely large file size which made the editing a little cumbersome.

In Windows Movie Maker I simple chose the better segments of video and put them in sequence. The software was user friendly and intuitive. I added a title to the front and credits at the end. It was a lot more straight forward than I thought. I could have spent some more time making it look more professional, but I was already pleased with the results. The movie was 1:47 and the .wmv file was a manageable 10.8 MB.

You can download it here (10.8 MB file) or watch it at Youtube or Google Video.

Close up of giant god

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