I am trying to make a video recorded on a Sony Digital 8mm camera into a website video. I transferred the video to my computer over a Firewire cable and it is AVI format. Now that Windows Media, Quicktime and Real have been eclipsed by Flash Video, I am trying to find a free Flash Video Encoder.
I first tried copying the 48 min file from my Sony Mini DV 8mm Camcorder to my hard drive using Cyberlink PowerDirector, which I purchased last year to edit old Super8 home movies I had transferred to DVD. This resulted in .
I have access to the following tools:
- Cyberlink PowerDirector
- Handbrake – Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
- An old version of AVSMedia Video Converter
- Flash Video Encoder which came with Adobe Web Premium CS3
- VLC can convert between formats, but the settings are quite complicated
- Milksoft’s Mobile Video converter is a wrapper for the Open Source converter fmpeg: http://www.miksoft.net/mobileMediaConverterDown.htm
- Microsoft Movie Maker which is included with Windows XP
The easiest thing to do would be to transfer the file off the camera and convert it with Adobe’s Flash Encoder. I tried this and Flash told me it did not support the codec. On to step 2.
The reason the Flash Encoder could not handle the file is that I transferred the file off the camcorder with Cyberlink, which compressed the file to about 2 Gigs using its own codec. So I transferred it again with Microsoft Movie Maker. The resulting uncompressed file is 9 GB!
Finally, I converted the AVI file with fmeg to a FLV.
