Video Editing: Picture in Picture

Last year while on a ride to Kelowna, BC on my Suzuki SV650K4 I did take a bit of video using my Panasonic SDR-SW20 Flash Camcorder. It was perfect for bike use. I had it mounted on my right handlebar mirror stem using Ram-Mounts. The SW20 is in a waterproof case, shockproof and best of all used electronic media rather than Hard Drives or tape mechanisms which can fail due to vibration. The SW20 is only a DVD quality, recording in standard definition which is perfect if you are going to use the clips in a picture in picture application, or podcasts where you would like to have smaller files.

I am not going to make this too technical but the SW20 produces .MOD files which cannot be imported into WMM (Windows Movie Maker). The reason that WMM or WMP (Windows Media Player) can't recognize these files which are produced by flash camcorders is because the Header Information is missing from the main file and is included in a secondary file as matched pairs. The header file includes information such as bitrate, aspect ratio (16:9 or 4:3 etc) in order for the codec to DECODE the info in the file. CODEC stands for COmpression and DECompression, after all Mpeg4 is a compressed format. I discovered a Utility that can give you the specifications of the file so you know what codecs you are missing. The original File produced by the SW20 is xxxxxx.MOD


(original specs of the .MOD file Panasonic SDR-SW20)

here is what it looks like after conversion to .AVI


(.MOD file converted to .AVI)

It has been converted to a DivX 5 but at a lower bitrate. I've been doing video editing for a couple of years now using the proven, Try and Fail Method, sort of like WWID as practiced by Charlie6. Eventually everything fell into place

This video was produced using 3 video clips from the SW20 and a couple of static photos which were downsized to 1100 x 800. The clips started out from the camera at 9510 Kbps and finalized at 2.5 Kbps for upload to YouTube 480p resolution HQ.

Here is a slice from the screen of PREL7 with a portion of the timeline



The video is compiled using 3 clips.

1) Westside Road just south of the Junction from Westbank BC with Okanagan Lake on the right

2) Hwy 8 From Merritt to Spences Bridge which is one of the better motorcycle roads which is just over 3 hours from the heart of Downtown Vancouver, BC

3) Heading south in the Fraser Canyon south of Boston Bar where there is a series of seven tunnels ( <-- link )

I placed two static photos overlayed with rolling video, then changed the background. Later I replaced the static photo with another video, overlayed with a video in a picture in picture. With PREL7 you can resize the thumbnail video to any size and place it anywhere on the screen. The I annotated the video with some titles. It was raing part of the way back from Kelowna (approx 400 kms East of Vancouver) and miles later when the sun came out I didn't think to check the protective lens cover to clear the mud from the glass so of course that blob is in the video.

I hope you like my little experiment with PIP