Uploading/viewing movies on my camera

[L. Daniel Rosa]

I have a Pentax Optio E60, it takes fair videos which I have no trouble transferring or watching on the camera. I want to put other movies into the camera to watch later, but the camera balks at this. I think it needs the format "just so". Does anybody here have any experience with this?

[reloadron]

I believe when shooting video the camera shoots Movie: AVI (Motion JPG) with sound @ 30 FPS. Therefore the playback software likely has only a codec for that file format. What file types are you trying to get the camera to play and at what FPS? I am not sure the camera will play back clips it didn't shoot either.

Ron

[L. Daniel Rosa]

Thank you for your input reloadron. Yes, I get AVI files and 30FPS is the default setting in the camera. I can also select 24FPS.

I had not considered that every variant on size and frame rate would use a different CODEC. The camera can take VGA or QVGA, so I suppose I will need to reformat any files to fit this. Even so, there may be other embedded data that makes it incompatible. Are there free players that will resize a file?

I will look for videos to download at those frame sizes to test the theory.

added:

I've converted something to the right resolution and hopefully the right CODEC. I made the frame rate match along with the bitrate and (hopefully) the same video format (Is there a difference between "MJPG" and "M-JPEG"). The audio is converted to WAV, which is the same format the camera records strictly audio in. The "properties" shows the audio in araw for what comes off the camera (audio raw output?).

The software is allowing the resolution to be changed to one of the two that the camera can produce (and hopefully view). It also lets me change the bitrates. I don't have the option (that I can find anyway) to change the audio resolution to 8 bit samples- the software keeps it at 16. It also gets the streams in the wrong order- stream 0 should be video and stream 1 should be audio.

Such as it is, the converter can play what it makes, but windows can't tell me the "properties" any more.

more added:

The software only lets me choose from a few audio sample rates:48000, 44100, 22500, 11250. Ya' see the problem here? How about 22050 and 11025?

[reloadron]

There are a number of FREE VIDEO CONVERTERS / PLAYERS out there but I can't attest as to how well they work. I have one I bought that seems to work for me and when I get home from work today I'll post what it is.

The whole Video thing is far from my forte. Occasionally I have to change a file format and that is about it.

Ron

[goingjag]

Since I purchased some software due to problems with most free stuff, I haven't tried this myself, but it looks like a big improvement over what I had used in the past.

http://paininthetech.com/2006/03/12/con ... -for-free/

gives a good description and tells where to get it. Free, with request for donation if you like it. Good luck

[kheston]

I would be surprised if you were able to get a movie that wasn't shot with the camera to playback on it. There's a limited amount of space in the camera's firmware for a codec to run, I'll bet it's REALLY finicky.

It will be quite the accomplishment, I think, to get it working however and will certainly come with bragging rights. Enjoy!

[VernGraner]

I want to put other movies into the camera to watch later, but the camera balks at this.

If the point of the exercise is to have movies that you can view on a portable playback device, it might be simpler to consider a unit such as this $55.00 Portable Video Player:



When you consider your camera's screen size, the format conversion complications, the amount of CPU time (and your time) invested in converting the videos, battery life of the player vs. a camera and the number of pictures and/or videos you can't shoot because the camera media is filled with your externally-loaded movies, it makes me wonder about the ROI of the whole process.

I've heard the expression "the right tool for the job" and it would just seem to me that the camera is a good tool for making pictures and movies, not to play them. Just my $0.02..

Vern

PS: No, I don't have one of the above players but I have seen and used plenty similar "iClone" style players and they seem to all work reasonably well.

[haklesup]

I have two cameras that shoot video and both produce an AVI file but I can only play them back with a divx codec installed. Occasionally is see the .mov format used and have to use Quicktime to play it. I expect you will need to convert to divx to play it on your camera. converters are available just search, not sure what resolution to use in a conversion though. use the wrong one and it either won't play or will look crappy.