Which Video Camera Is Best Suited For Smugmug?

Buzzez

Hey all,

I'm wondering which video camera is best suited for Smugmug? My digital cameras video format doesn't work there and my cheezy Oregon Scientific video's format is wrong too.

So the question is: What video camera should I get that cost aroud $350 or less and has the format that Smugmug supports without requiring me to getting all technical and converting it? :ear

Andy

I shouldn't answer Bee-cause you haven't put this in your avatar

Andy

But I shall answer:

Our video support is still rather lame - needs to be MPEG-1. Sorry about that.

Buzzez

Is this better?

Thanks, I'll be looking for a video camera with that format.

rainforest1155

Buzzez wrote:

Thanks, I'll be looking for a video camera with that format.

Actually you don't want to record your videos in that format. It's crappy quality and not up-to-date anymore. You don't want to have your clips in crappy quality, do you?
The point is in order to put them on smugmug you have to shrink and reconvert the video anyways, because the current limit of 8MB per video gives you a couple minutes of thumb sized video with mpg1.

Get a good camera that makes good videos which you then still can convert to crappy ones, but not the other way around. Try to search for video forums or camera reviews on google in order to get an idea of what's good at the moment. Also Alatest seems to be a good review site for electronics - maybe that's a starting point.

When you've got your camera and some videos you can start thinking about putting them on smugmug. There are already some alternatives on how to avoid the crappy mpg1 by using youtube or something like that integrated in your smugmug site.


Hope this helps a bit,
Sebastian

scwalter

rainforest1155 wrote:

Actually you don't want to record your videos in that format. It's crappy quality and not up-to-date anymore. You don't want to have your clips in crappy quality, do you?
The point is in order to put them on smugmug you have to shrink and reconvert the video anyways, because the current limit of 8MB per video gives you a couple minutes of thumb sized video with mpg1.

Get a good camera that makes good videos which you then still can convert to crappy ones, but not the other way around. Try to search for video forums or camera reviews on google in order to get an idea of what's good at the moment. Also Alatest seems to be a good review site for electronics - maybe that's a starting point.

When you've got your camera and some videos you can start thinking about putting them on smugmug. There are already some alternatives on how to avoid the crappy mpg1 by using youtube or something like that integrated in your smugmug site.


Hope this helps a bit,
Sebastian

I agree with Sebastian 100%, don't sacrifice quality of your source video to meet Smugmug's extremely poor video support. I doubt you could even find one that supports it natively. Here's a pretty good review site:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

There are lots of good MiniDV camcorders in your price range. Once you get a camcorder, you can use many editors to downconvert it to MPG-1. If you're on a PC, Windows movie Maker is free, Adobe Premiere Elements is under $100 and there are a bunch more.

-Scott

Buzzez

Ok, so one can't just download their video's straight online. First I'd need to convert it to MPG-1. Check.

Now, I have tried following the instructions from Smugmug on doing this some time ago and failed miserably. If I could learn to convert the video's that I capture with my Kodak digital camera, I'd be completly satisfied. Since any video I'd capture would be a short 1-2 minutes long.

Anyone know of a better tutorial?

Andy

rainforest1155 wrote:

Actually you don't want to record your videos in that format. It's crappy quality and not up-to-date anymore. You don't want to have your clips in crappy quality, do you?
The point is in order to put them on smugmug you have to shrink and reconvert the video anyways, because the current limit of 8MB per video gives you a couple minutes of thumb sized video with mpg1.

Get a good camera that makes good videos which you then still can convert to crappy ones, but not the other way around. Try to search for video forums or camera reviews on google in order to get an idea of what's good at the moment. Also Alatest seems to be a good review site for electronics - maybe that's a starting point.

When you've got your camera and some videos you can start thinking about putting them on smugmug. There are already some alternatives on how to avoid the crappy mpg1 by using youtube or something like that integrated in your smugmug site.


Hope this helps a bit,
Sebastian

+1