Does anybody know of a free program which will allow me to chop off the beginning and end of my footage, or edit out and use a good bit.

I don't want to do any more than that.
And of course like a good Fournicator, I don't want to pay anything!

Yours, Bob

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I asked my tech savvy teenage son what he uses. He said that he believes that Windows XP and up comes with Window Movie Maker as part of the package and this allows basic cut and splice and adding music. He says that most Mac's come with iMovie installed. Personally he uses Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 that he bought at Walmart for about $40 and recommends it as easy and intuitive to use. My daughter used it to edit and compile the video clips of the Vivat first flights that I posted on YouTube. It allows various different fade techniques when splicing and you can overlay comments, music and so on. probably just the capabilities you are looking for. This is the most basic Vegas package and you can easily spend a lot more if you get carried away buying capability you think you need!

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

Looking forward to seeing some more product! I still have a good chuckle each time I see your video clip where in the heat of battle of a forced landing you still had the presence of mind (or sense of humor) to yell "Fore" on short finals - great stuff!

Best regards,

Dave

The VLC-program is a free player that I use for watching the GoPro clips (mp4, I think) and make screen captures (=pictures from the videoclip). You can also use VLC to convert mp4-files to AVI-format, which I read somewhere is best for editing. However, this conversion makes the mp4 files baloon up to three times the size (they are already huge) and the VLC program is a bit awkward to use for this conversion, but possible.

After that you can use Windows Movie Maker or some other software to edit as Dave suggested. I haven't been able to do that yet since I can't install Windows Movie Maker on the PC I'm using. To accomodate the huge files I bought a 2 TB external disk (that I am rapidly using up). One option to reduce the file size is of course to go to a lower resolution setting on the camera, but somehow I am a bit reluctant to do that. Electronic memoryspace is getting cheaper and if you shoot in a lower resolution you can't get higher, if you catch my drift.

May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen

I'm still working on that carb manual.

I have XP and Movie Maker and I've used that for most of the clips on YouTube's FournierBob channel.

I didn't know that about using VLC to convert the GoPro files to .AVI Jorgen.

How precisely do you do it please?

Seems like that's gonna be the easiest way for me (with a couple of giggles left on my hard drive!)

Yours, Bob

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Reviews said that Cyberlink was faster with a more intuitive interface than Adobe (better for me with occasional use). So I had my local shop put together a new box for me with Win-7-64, an Intel i7-2600, 16g ram, and an NVidia GeForce GTX 550. Although the system is about a year old now (possibly newer/better components available now) the combination performs very well.

Alas.....not free.

[Edit by JamesB on Friday, June 1, 2012 @ 11:03 AM]

Bob, I was afraid you would ask that, I hardly remember and it's not very intuitive. As I stated I have only tried it once (it worked!) but it takes some time and I can imagine the process is crash-prone as James remarked. Anyway, I think you need to open the file you are converting in VLC (or perhaps put it on a list in the drop box- see below). In the upper left corner, put the mouse on the "Media" drop down menue, the third from the last item is "convert/save". Press that, in the pop-up box there is a "choose file"-box where you browse and mark the file to be converted. In the drop down menue in the lower part of the same box slightly to the right of the middle there is a drop down-box marked "convert/save". Choose "convert" (last of the list) and make sure the "AVI" format is set in the next pop-up box in which you choose where to save your converted file. Press convert and go make yourself a cup of coffee. Or three- it takes some time!

May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen

[Edit by Jorgen on Saturday, June 2, 2012 @ 02:38 AM]

I’m having real trouble trying to convert my GoPro MP4 files to .avi, .wmv or anything else I can work with in Windows Movie Maker, so I would be really grateful if you Jorgen, or anybody else, can help me out here.

If you can help, the best way to reply might be to copy and paste this text into your word processing program (Word?) and amend appropriately in capital letters, then re-post. That should save a bit of time.

I open the appropriate MP4 file in VLC (by double-clicking on that file, because VLC seems to have made itself the default program for playing anything).

Pause the playback.

Click on ‘media’ (drop-down box, top left corner).

Click on "convert/save".

In the pop-up box there is a box where you browse and mark the file to be converted.
Click on the ‘Add’ button, select your required file source, and it appears in the big box alongside. In this case, my GoPro file is 445,658kb.

In the drop down menu in the lower part of the same box, slightly to the right of the middle there is a drop down-box marked "convert/save". Choose "convert" (last of the list).

Specify where you want the converted file to be saved, using ‘destination file’ and ‘Browse’, and choose a name for the converted file.

Here Jorgen says, ‘and make sure the "AVI" format is set in the next pop-up box in which you choose where to save your converted file. Press convert and go make yourself a cup of coffee. Or three- it takes some time!’

My problem is that ‘AVI’ is not one of the proffered available formats. .WMV, WMA and .MPG are available, among many others, and I can work in Movie Maker with those, but when I make that choice, I end up with a smaller file (rather than a bigger one as expected) of 1,409kb in .PS format (whatever that is). This is just about recognisable as a version of the original file, but so badly corrupted as to be unusable.

I have tried clicking on the ‘Tools’ box, to the right of the ‘Profile’ box, and clicking on the ‘AVI’ dot on the ‘encapsulation’ page. The result was a bigger, 51,928kb file, but that is still one-tenth the size of the original (rather than three times its size as expected), and slightly better quality, but badly pixellated, and it is still an unusable .PS file.

However I try to save a converted file, the default format keeps coming up as: ‘containers .PS, .TS, MPG, .OGG, .ASF, .MP4, .MOV file’, but the result actually always comes out as a .PS file. This I think is where my problem lies, that .AVI is not one of the options, but I really cannot see why this should be so.

I did try to fool the system, by typing in the suffix .AVI instead of .PS in the line for the name of the saved file, and although it was a slightly bigger file (60,354kb) and of a little better quality, despite its .AVI suffix and VLC’s ability to play it, Movie Maker would not accept it, saying the file was corrupted.

I have been struggling with this all week, in an attempt to post some quite nice head-cam and fin-cam footage for everybody to see, but I have become very frustrated.

It is pretty clear that I am either missing out on a vital step, or making one step wrongly somewhere, so I would be EXTREMELY grateful if anybody can help me out here, and correct my sequence of actions as explained above.

Thanks very much for taking the time to help me.

Yours, Bob

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgM9kQACkCU&feature=related

I think there might be better converter options out there, especially since digital videos are common nowadays. Here is an example of a free converter (Youtubeclip) but be warned some reviewers said there is a waterstamp inserted on the free version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAQYNW2HnRE

I read some reviews regarding some other free software converters, and there were some warnings that you should read carefully in the different boxes during the installation and take your time to uncheck unnecessary stuff, but this is true regarding most "free-ware"- remember, apparently there ain't no such thing as free lunches....

May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen

[Edit by Jorgen on Saturday, June 9, 2012 @ 07:00 PM]

I loaded this one and converted an MPG file to AVI no problem.
It also does all sorts of other format conversions.

Its Free, #1 on CNET and easy to use.

http://download.cnet.com/FormatFactory/3000-2194_4-10968547.html?tag=bc

Once its in AVI then use Windows Movie Maker.

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