Upgrading the quality of our classic car driving videos.

[Guest]

We have had good experience with selling classic and muscle cars and late
model vehicles from our website at www.prideautoplaza.com with each vehicle
presentation having a 3 minute driving video. I have had a number of buyers
tell me that the video sold the vehicle. These mpeg videos have been easy to
publish on frontpage 2002 but they are poor quality visually being made with
a digital camera. We are trying to upgrade the video quality with a new Sony
Hard Disc Drive Handy Cam which records on mpeg format also but but are
unable to insert the new videos after we are editing the new videos down to a
workable size with windows movie maker which changes the format. I have
looked at Microsofts website for information and tried to follow their
directions for accomplishing this. I know I am showing my ignorance here,
but it seems that our 2002 fp has some of the features mentioned in 2002 fp
and some feature of 2003. I have tried unsuccessfully to insert a non mpeg
file, I have tried programs to convert back to mpeg format and have tried
unsuccessfully to follow instructions for installing a plug in. Any
information on how to get through this would be much appreciated. Thanks in
advance, Charles Carver

 

[Chris Leeds, MVP - FrontPage]

Howdy!
I spent a good number of years in the car business and have recently been
getting into video for the web.

regarding the camera, I bought a great camera for cheap $ here:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2877262&CatId=129

it's more than good enough to make video for the web (because you're usually
reducing it's actual size anyway) and it's nice and steady with good color
rendering.

I like to use a bunch of different tools:
Camtasia from www.techsmith.com has good facilities for working the video
over and good output methods (.swf/.flv, etc). Also a good tool (and cheap)
is QuickTime Pro.

There's also a good (and real cheap) tool here:
http://coffeecup.com/video-player not much in the way of compression but
outputs some nice flash based players (with play list, etc.).

IMHO I would always try to show the video in an embedded player of some
sort, Flash being my first choice, WMP being my second.

If you need any further help, I'll be glad to share what I've found.

HTH

Chris

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Chris Leeds
Contact: http://chrisleeds.com/contact

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[Guest]

Chris, I will take a look at the websites you listed. It seems like it the
simplest solution though would be to get front page to accept a format other
than mpeg which others seem to accomplish with no difficulty but I have not
been able to make happen.
Also you mentioned installing a flash player. I don't know what a
flash player is or how to install one. Is there some place available where I
can get a tutorial?

Thank you for the information. Charles Carver

 

[Chris Leeds, MVP - FrontPage]

Hi Charles,
I looked at your website earlier today.
first you'll need to learn to compress the video by both altering the
physical size of it and it's compression (compression codec). this isn't so
hard and can usually be done in either windows movie maker (already present
on most systems) and/or QuickTime Pro.
to make a flash player and install it into a page I would recommend new
users take a serious look at www.coffeecup.com/video-player there's
virtually NO learning curve, it's cheap, and it makes pretty nice looking
flash movie players utilizing the best methods for web display.

Feel free to contact me through my site if you want some personal help.

Chris

--
Have you seen ContentSeed (www.contentseed.com)?
--
Chris Leeds
Contact: http://chrisleeds.com/contact

NOTE:
This message was posted from an unmonitored email account.
This is an unfortunate necessity due to high volumes of spam sent to email
addresses in public newsgroups.
Sorry for any inconvenience.