At this rate she will never be a movie star...

Why so complicated?! For a long time now, I have wanted to spend some time understanding digital video formats and moving videos to and from various devices. I have TWO camcorders (one a mini DV and another a mini DVD) that I have NEVER been able to get video from. I can video all I want, but I can not get the video transferred to my computer so that I can burn it to DVD or even share it online. All this expensive equipment and I have to rely on a $200 Kodak Easy share for any video that I want to actually show anyone via the web. I have my very expensive Nikon D40 camera and I still keep the Kodak laying around and charged up because I can take videos quickly, easily, and I can even more importantly GET THEM OFF THE CARD and onto the computer easily.

Now that my daughter is 1 year old, I have VOWED to get this figured out. I WILL get videos from this damn camcorder. I WILL get them on DVD. It WILL happen.

A former co-worker told me that he uses the free version of Windows Movie Maker and it does everything that he needs. So I downloaded it. And I figured that it would be the easiest if I started tinkering with it in order to edit and title and prepare the videos that I already HAVE on my computer. Well, that wouldn't work. And frustration and time constraints have prevented me from figuring out why. Today I realized that a new baby would be coming in the new year, and I still have all of Ardyn's mini DVDs that I can't access, organize, or burn to a regular DVD.

So I researched. And found that
1. Most Digital Cameras take videos in the .mov format, which is the apple/quicktime format. Because it's apple, you can't open it in Windows Movie Maker (Argh.) and therefore in order to use WMM (Windows Movie Maker) for any .mov files from a digital camera, you would first have to download and convert all of your movies to a more compatible format, such as .avi

2. My Camcorder Disks cannot be read in a regular CDRom or DVDRom Drive until they are finalized. In order to finalize them, the Camcorder must be running on AC power from the wall adaptor. Unfortunately, we don't HAVE the cord to use as a wall adaptor, so we have to ORDER it for $16.95 plus shipping.

3. If you try to play a disk in your computer's CDRom Drive or a DVD player without finalizing it, not only will it not work, but you may inadvertently ruin the information on the mini DV, making it unusable and losing the videos. So, unfortunately, I have the fear of god that I may have ruined some of my daughter's videos of her first year, because this is exactly what I did.

And people wonder why the average joe gets all confused when trying to deal with videos. I will conquer this, and soon. But seriously, this is not simple folks. And to be honest with you, by the time I have time to sit down and study all of this again, it will be confusing and my head will be swimming and it will feel like I am starting from scratch. But maybe it will help if I come back and read this post first?

By the way, sorry that I missed the November meeting. I was getting ready to go out of town for a long weekend without my daughter or my husband, so there was alot of preparing to do at home and I had already been to Princeton twice that day. In fact I was asleep on the couch during the meeting. I was exhausted!

And in case anyone is reading this... the new baby is a boy!