gateslacker

I filmed the comprehensive video assessment today and I was a little over three minutes under the hour time limit. I thought I was doing really well. I had both my camera AND my sister's digital video camera recording. I had two 4gb memory cards. When my camera still stopped recording (after 1gb is reached which was 25 minutes) I still had plan B, sis's camera. I couldn't use the mini DVD's for her camera because they were only 30min. I went to the hospital and used the endoscopy room to record. It all went well and I even made sure the whole thing was recorded before I left.

I get home and neither of my memory cards will work in either computer. I suspect it is my card reader and these are new SDHC cards. I hook the digital video camera with memory card inside and voila, I am in business. Or so I think. Then, the stupid AVI file will not play in either quicktime or media player and I get only audio. Thus begins my internet search for a solution because, so help me, if I don't find one, I am sending her the entire video camera and card and telling her to watch it like that! There is no way that I am going to re record the whole thing now! So, I am determined to find a solution. I try importing everything into Movie Maker and Adobe elements, with no success. I try to burn using DVD maker, with no success. At this point I want to pull my hair out! I was so excited that this was done and I just wanted to kick back the rest of the evening. NO SUCH LUCK. Sometimes it seems that nothing ever goes according to plan, though I suspect that we only notice these thing because they don't go as planned and we may just ignore the stuff that does go well. Still, I feel somewhat plagued at times by stuff just not working out. I had the divx codec and the xvid one. WHY would this avi file not play. ARGH!!

In any case, I finally happened upon a forum question, as you often do in these sort of searches. Usually, no one is having the exact problem you are encountering, I don't understand the tech heavy solution, or I try it and it doesn't work. This time, I happened upon and answer that included a decoder, ffdshow video converter http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/ , that decodes automatically without me having to keep installing codecs and hoping that this one will work. At the moment, my DVD is encoding/burning which is more progress than I made earlier, when it would only give me error messages. I thought I would post my frustration rather than enduring a nail biting viewing of the "progress" screen.

I'm hoping for the best.

If this works, all I have left is the final next Sunday. WOOHOOO!!!