Movie Files

Creating Movies

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If you have access to an analogue video camera, a digital video camera, or a digital still camera (some models can shoot 15-30 seconds of video), you can use it to create your own movie files. In the case of the analogue video camera, you will need a way to convert the video footage into a digital format that your computer can handle.

The documentation for the software used with a digital video camera should provide the details of how to create movies. The original movie clips will probably be stored in a proprietary format, in which case it will be necessary to have software that converts the format to the common ones used on the web (AVI, MPEG, and Quicktime).

Apart from the software bundled with digital cameras, there are other programs that let you manipulate video files. For example, they may allow you to edit a movie file (regardless of how it was originally created). One very popular such program is Apple's Quicktime Pro. This is a relatively inexpensive program that allows you to view movies, edit them, and import and export the results in various different file formats (and it has additional features). Examples of still more full-featured (and more expensive) commercial-grade video editing programs are Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier.

There are also various programs that will allow you to construct movies from individual images, somewhat like a conventional movie reel is created by putting together frames of still pictures (and somewhat like the process of creating animated GIF images). As an example of a movie constructed from still frames, here is a truly spectacular movie (warning: this MPEG file is 780 KByte so it may take a while for you to download) created by NASA using still images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. This movie is as close to the viewscreen from the bridge of the starship Enterprise as we are likely to get in real life! (Here is an explanation of what you are seeing in this movie, in case you are interested.)

Finally, we note that not only can the Windows screen capture program SnagIt save snapshots of static screen areas (as we've seen), it can also capture a changing portion of the screen to an AVI movie. You could, in fact, use SnagIt to capture an animated gif to an AVI movie. (But you should, by now, realize that, for various reasons, this would probably not be a good idea.) Can you think of some cases where SnagIt's video capture mode could help you?