Canon Camera AVI File Editing
Besides the Nikon D70, I also uses a Canon SD450 for quick pictures and movie taking. This is a great camera — compare to my first Canon S100, they have come a very long way.
Finally I decided to publish some of the movies that I have taken with this camera. To my surprise, the “AVI” files created by the camera cannot be edited by any software that I have, including the semi-pro software Vegas Video.
After some research, I learnt that the files created by the Canon and other similar cameras are in the Motion JPEG format, or MJPG. They are basically a series of JPEG images stored together to form a movie. This is why such a small device can capture movies — very little processing is done by the camera. And unfortunately most video editing software does not have the codec built in to handle the MJPG format.
What to do? There are some company that sells codec for MJPG. They include:
- http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/
- http://www.mainconcept.com
- http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm
- http://www.softpile.com/Multimedia/Video/Review_10792_index.html
Another slightly easier way is to use the current ZoomBrowser (version 5.5) software that came with Canon to first export the movie to a real quicktime MOV format.
I have to agree with you. I bought the Canon SD450 last December and it is far better than my Sony Cybershot DSC-T1; I only need to carry around a USB cable and a small charger instead of 3 pieces of wire and a cradle when I travel. Since the zoom is optical, it takes much better pictures than the Cybershot.
Along the same thread – I took a movie using Canon SD1000 in a vertical position. Is there a way to change it to a horizontal position? Any help would be appreciated.
Yes, I found that if you have access to Quicktime pro (like would come standard on a Mac) you open the AVI file, Option-J, then there is a button there to rotate the video (under one of the tabs), click it, OK, and then Save As complete file. It does not re-encode video, just re-orients the JPG data.