Note: Please, no tech support questions. This is a technical article and I don’t have time to help you. Please ask elsewhere.

Step 1: Converting the video to be usable

You can use ffmpeg to convert the files into a usable format. I built ffmpeg from source but you can use a pre-compiled binary if you can find one. Note that the version currently supplied (as of 20 June 2010) with MacPorts is too old. If your converted video shows only green and no picture, you need to use a newer ffmpeg.

The correct command to convert the video is:

ffmpeg -i video_from_camera.MTS -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec mjpeg -dc 11 -qmin 1 -qscale 1 fixed_video.mov

Replace “video_from_camera” and “fixed_video” with the names of the video file from the card, and the name you want to save as, respectively. You’ll find the videos on the card in the folder PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM.

This converts the video to motion-JPEG with PCM audio – a format which can be easily edited with most software (including, most usefully, iMovie ’09) and retains the frame rate.

I wrote the following bash script to automatically convert all the files from the card into a folder on my hard disk:

#!/bin/bash
mkdir -p ~/Movies/Camera
cd /Volumes/CAM_SD/PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM
for f in *.MTS; do
echo $f
ffmpeg -i $f -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec mjpeg -strict -1 -dc 11 -qmin 1 -qscale 1 ~/Movies/Camera/$(basename $f .MTS).mov
done

Change “CAM_SD” to be the name of your card or camera.

The converted files end up in a folder called “Camera” inside your “Movies” folder. Make sure you rename the Camera folder before you run the script again, or it will overwrite the movies already there.

2. Editing the video

2a. Using Final Cut Express

Final Cut Express does not support any video greater than 30fps. You can import the video and edit it, but you will end up with 25 or 30fps upon export. The quality will still be higher than shooting in 1080i, however, so you may be happy to go this route.

Note: I’m not rich enough to own a copy of Final Cut Pro, so I don’t know anything about it. Sorry.

2b. Using iMovie ’09

It is possible to keep the 50fps frame rate using iMovie.

Import the converted video into iMovie, and turn off the “Optimize” option. If you turn on “Optimize”, your video will be converted back to 25/30 fps.

If you want to preserve the high frame rate on export, you’ll need to use “Export using QuickTime” to export to MP4 and manually choose 50 (or 60) fps, or iMovie will default to 25/30.

If you don’t care about the frame rate, you can use iMovie’s other “Share” menu options, but these will convert to 25 or 30fps. You’ll still get better quality than you would if you’d shot in 1080i, so you may be happy with this.

(Spill size accurate to May 31st.)

George W. Banks: Yes, sir. Yes, I think I do. As the ship lay anchored in Boston Harbor, a party of the colonists dressed as red Indians boarded the vessel, behaved very rudely, and threw all the tea overboard. This made the tea unsuitable for drinking. Even for Americans. ]]> http://www.davidglover.org/2010/05/in-1773.html/feed 0 http://www.davidglover.org/2010/05/vodafone-have-lost-the-plot.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vodafone-have-lost-the-plot http://www.davidglover.org/2010/05/vodafone-have-lost-the-plot.html#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 18:11:14 +0000 David http://www.davidglover.org/2010/05/vodafone-have-lost-the-plot.html Continue reading →]]> It was only a few weeks ago that I was singing the praises of Vodafone as the best network for iPhone owners, and the network I was planning to switch to when I upgrade my aging iPhone 3G later this year.

A few days ago, however, Vodafone announced that that were introducing rather draconian “fair usage policies” on their “unlimited” data plans. It’s long been known that in the mobile data world, “unlimited” has been a borderline-illegal description of a service that is anything but. Vodafone would now be charging £5 for every 500MB, or 50p for every 10MB for pre-pay customers.

But now…

Earlier today I posted a story about iPad data plans, including a screenshot (which you can still see in my previous post, and I am now glad that I took a screenshot) that listed the top Vodafone plan as “5GB”. Now, however, the same page has been changed to look like this:

(Obviously, the red annotations are mine.)

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Not only is Vodafone’s 5GB plan listed incredibly inaccurately as “Unlimited”, but right above it is Orange’s 10GB plan, for the same price, advertised accurately, and making a mockery of the whole situation.

Never before has the utter limited-ness of an “Unlimited” plan been more clear, and Vodafone deserve to suffer from this blatant example of false advertising.

My next iPhone will not be on Vodafone.

Many to choose from! O2 has the advantage that their SIM is bundled with the iPad, but on the face of it, all of these plans seem quite reasonable. It is, however, interesting to compare how much 1GB of data costs on each of these plans:

Suddenly larger differences appear. The Vodafone 250MB per month plan seems on the face of it to be particularly poor value, but it’s worth remembering that this graph ignores how long each plan lasts. That 250MB lasts for a month, compared to Orange’s 200MB plan which only lasts one day before you have to pay again. What you choose will have to depend on how often you expect to use 3G data.

For large amounts of data usage the Orange 10GB/month plan seems best value, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that this is also the most expensive plan, at £25 per month. It compares well with the Vodafone 5GB per month plan, however, which costs exactly the same but only gets you half as much data.

The final factor worth considering is coverage. Orange’s 3G coverage is a little better than Vodafone’s – but both are far ahead of O2, whose coverage can at best be described as “fair”.