Learning with the Fang

I have just been handed 3×1 hour .wmv files of about 900MB, containing
some very slow 640×480 footage of a glass extrusion recorded to miniDV
tape. The plan is to turn into 5 minutes of fast moving extrusion
goodness.

I know I can set up FinalCut Pro to import the
footage, change the duration of each clip to 1:40 then paste the three
together and export to quicktime .mov. Trouble is it will be fiddly to
match frame size rate etc, then take ages to render and export. A quick
google search suggests QuickTimePro can do the trick via some clever
copy/pastery in QuickTime player.

Here is the secret:

• You need to have QuickTimePro (and Flip4mac to deal with the .wmv encoding).
• Open the first .wmv file and drag the start/stop handles of quicktime player to select 1:40 of footage
• Edit->Trim to selection then save as ‘OneMinute40.mov’ as self contained movie
• Drag start/stop handles to select all 1:40 of OneMinute40.mov
• In the first .wmv window, Edit->Select ALL, copy
• In the OneMinute40.mov window Edit->Add to selection & scale
• Window->show movie properties and delete all unwanted tracks (except the newly pasted movie)
• Quick as a flash you have compressed one hour to one minute fourty seconds
• File->Export (I’m exporting to quicktime .mov, original size, 25fps, Jpeg compressor). This is the slowest step at about 10 minutes to render each minute of final output.
• To join my 3 x 1:40 clips into one 5 min .mov I’m just pasting from one QuickTime Player window to the end of the movie in the other.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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