Subscribe"The .avi file has two audio tracks, Spanish and English. When I use a converter to get it ready for my iPod, it will use the Spanish track. How do I get a converter that I can chose which audio track to use?"
Since I don't know which converter you're currently using, I'll offer an easy solution that will get you the result you want without buying more software and an investment of about 5 minutes extra time. Before you covert the video file, open it in VirtualDubMod, modify the audio properties of the file, and save it without needing to recompress the audio. You can either save a copy with the Spanish track still there or overwrite the file and ditch the Spanish track altogether. Here's how it works:
"I recorded an old 8mm movie by projecting it against a white wall and then recording it with my MiniDV Camcorder. When I finished recording the 8mm movie with my camcorder, I played back the tape and still ended up with some flickering in the recorded video. Is there any way to remove the flicker from my video?"
Recording 8mm movies with a camcorder is still the cheapest way to preserve them, but it's not without a few hoops to jump through. If you have a camcorder with adjustable frame rate, you can generally get flickering down to zero. Many consumer camcorders lack this feature so you need to use software instead. The best solution I've found (even compared to some that cost hundreds of dollars) is the freeware Deflicker filter for VirtualDub created by Donald Graft. Here's how it works:
"Is there any program that can import XviD video clips and combine them to make one video from several smaller videos without losing quality?"
Virtually any video editing application will let you combine several video clips into one larger video. The downside is they almost always recompress the video, which makes it look worse than the individual clips did before you started. One of my favorite tools for combining AVI video clips without any recompression is VirtualDubMod. The only trick to making sure you don't recompress the files is to make sure they are all encoded with the same settings to begin with.
Chris writes, "We have tried Sonic and Roxio to transfer our digital camera movies to DVD. The movies burn to DVD OK, but when we play in our DVD player on TV screens, the movies are pixilated and not clear... is there some way to correct this problem? If I am understanding the 160 box in the bottom of the camera's movie screen window, our recording pixels may be set at 160 x 120 (compact). Any hope for making to big screen? Or is there a way for the video to only play at 1/4 the size instead of full screen - thereby hopefully keeping integrity of video?
160x120 video is never going to look good on a television screen. The resolution is simply too low. What Sonic does when it authors a standard definition DVD is size the video to fit at a standard full screen NTSC television (or PAL television if you're authoring a PAL disk). That means your 160x120 video is getting stretched to approximately 4 times it's original size. You're on the right track with attempting to play the video at 1/4 the size of full screen, but you need some additional tools to make it work.
