Scott, I can cut down the size fairly seriously, but the quality REALLY suffers. I wanted to post this clip so people can see how it looks when it comes right out of the camera. Besides, I don't get charged for transfers on my web host - its on a private line in Chicago, on a computer I have admin priv's to....
Dee, you have a number of options. For VCDs I do the following:
1. Export it to DV format from Quicktime. This converts it to 30fps (necessary for display on a NTSC TV) and also fixes the encoder problems that would otherwise be present. Be warned that this makes the clip HUGE - that clip is about 80MB (!) in that format.
If you try to get cute with the export to save disk space while assembling the project you will lose SIGNIFICANT amounts of image quality! Don't!
2. Use Roxio to assemble the VCD of clip(s). You can also rip out and replace audio tracks either in Quicktime or Roxio; I typically do exactly that, and replace the audio with music. Actually, most of the time when I shoot video I have the mic turned off on the camera; I screwed up this time and left it on. Oh well. (Beware distributing your movies with someone else's music on them though, especially with the RIAA on the warpath as they are these days....)
3. Roxio then burns the VCD to disk. That disk will play in MOST DVD players (but not all!) Quality is NOT up to DVD standards, but is a bit better than a S-VHS video tape, and WAY better than a normal VHS video tape. There is no "dot crawl" at all; I personally think it looks better than my Hi-8 camcorder on my HDTV system.
I made up a VCD of four Remora clips all assembled (this is one of the 4), a couple of others, and a ~10 minute movie of another dive (which I have in DV format - WAY huge native) all onto one VCD with a menu and all; it consumed about 1/3rd of a CD-R, and runs about 13 minutes.
I played with the various export options and assembled and burned about a dozen disks before I hit on the "magic" combination that gave me the quality I'm getting now. The raw files off the camera are what you see here - the trick is getting them onto a VCD without ruining them.
No, its not DVD quality, but its darn good for a camera intended for stills. The other footage of the other dive I have was shot with a VERY high-end, government-owned 3ccd DV handheld, and while that video quality is noticably better, that's also a $3,000 camera! The real shortcoming in terms of video quality is that there is quite a bit of noticable bleed-through of colors - common in single-CCD imaging sensors, and noise level is higher than I'd like, but that's low light for you.
The shocker is the white-balance capabilty and ability to shoot productively with nothing more than ambient light at depth. To be able to get real, honest-to-god reds to show up at 80' without ANY external lighting is amazing to me. The $3,000 camera didn't do nearly as well, even with a red filter on it - I was shooting with no filters at all, just calibrating the white balance when I got to the bottom. BTW, if you do that make sure you recal if you want to shoot on the way up the line, or you'll get a REAL red image!
A 256MB CF card will hold about 12 minutes of video, a 1GB card about 45 minutes (!) of continuous shooting. Both hold a bit more with sound turned off than turned on. If the sound is off you can zoom with the camera rolling; if its turned on then the zoom position is locked when filming.
I have a 256MB card in there now, and just ordered a 1GB card to complement it, as this is WAY cool and with a 1GB card I can shoot damn near an entire dive and have room for a few dozen stills all at once.
As far as I can tell the only limit on the continuous shooting capability is the card's size - there is no internal memory buffer issue, at least not with reasonably fast CF cards; I've run the entire 12 minutes on my current CF card in one clip.
As a "combination" video and still camera this thing ROCKS!
