Converting file size helps with video loading

By: DON EDRINGTON - For the North County Times | Sunday, April 9, 2006 7:53 PM PDT ∞

Joe Francis called to say that when he tried to e-mail an AVI video, taken with his digital camera, the file could not be sent. Well, AVI files are often too large for many e-mail systems, so I suggested converting it to a smaller WMV file with Windows Movie Maker, a program that comes with WinXP. Joe wrote to say this worked perfectly.

Most of today's digital cameras come with video capabilities, and produce high-resolution AVI movies that play beautifully on your PC via the Windows Media Player. These files can be edited in many ways with WMM, which includes options for reducing file sizes significantly.

Upon launching WMM you will see a "Story Board" displaying a number of blank frames. Under "1 - Capture Video" there are options for importing a file from your My Videos folder or importing a file directly from your camera. A file you select will then appear as a "thumbnail still" of its opening scene.

To simply convert the AVI file to a WMV file, drag the thumbnail into the first box of the Story Board and click on File>Save Movie As, whereupon you will see a number of options, such as saving it to your computer's hard drive or to a CD. You will also see options for saving it with a reduced file size, and be admonished that doing so will reduce the resolution quality of the video. Choosing a very small file size may also reduce the screen view to a quarter of the original size.

You can experiment with these options to see which gives you an acceptable balance of smaller file size versus a somewhat diminished viewing quality.

Each successive save will automatically produce a sequentially numbered file name, which leaves your original unchanged.

Getting back to the Story Board, use the various frames to insert titles, other video clips, or any number of features that might enhance the finished product. WMM is loaded with a variety of prompts and "wizards" to make editing easy and intuitive. The finished WMV file will play in Windows Media Player, as well as in most other media players and in most portable video players.

Speaking of media players, I periodically get calls saying the "swing-era" songs found on my site don't download and play as they once did. The problem is always the same -- the user has unknowingly been switched to something other than the Windows Media Player, which comes with new PCs.

There are many media players available, each with its own quirks about downloading and playing files. RealPlayer is the sneakiest, since it is a "free download" which will play most types of audio and video files ---- for a while. Then you'll get a notice that RealPlayer needs to be updated to continue working -- for a fee.

Reinstate Windows Media Player by right-clicking a song and going to Open With>Choose Program>Always Use the Selected Program to Open this Kind of File.

More tips can be found at www.pcdon.com and calls are welcome at (949) 646-8615.