[Mike Schoonbrood]

I know some people, like myself, have digital cameras that record the video files in QuickTime format, and unless you have a Mac this is a pain in the ass format to work with, Windows Movie Maker doesn't work with it and the files are generally huge, they are nice quality so you always want to have the highest quality original, but sharing them on the internet can be a pain.

I searched around and found this software for $49.99 that lets you shrink the videos down to whatever size you put in (so if you use a service like PutFile.com that limits videos to 25MB, you just tell the software you want the video no larger than 25MB) and it compresses it down to this size with the click of 2 buttons with no technical crap to fill in. It also converts the video to a different, more editable format, like MPEG, AVI, WMV etc that can then later be opened in Windows Movie Maker to add transitions, special effects and titles.

It also lets you burn movies directly to CD or DVD so you have the option to share them with people like that too. It's called Ashampoo Shrink & Burn:

http://www.ashampoo-root03.com/webcache/html/1/product_2_0137_.htm

I'm using the trial version right now and it's much much easier than using QuickTime Pro to convert to Avi then have to re-convert it to WMV with Windows Movie Maker, this takes out a bunch of steps

There is also an older version for $14.99 that I haven't tried but might do the same thing for less money.

Enjoy!

 

[Kristen Cabe]

Cool! Something to think about.

I uploaded my most recent videos to Photobucket, and it seems to be a little easier for people to view them that way.

 

[Sarah Hall]

I like photobucket best. My camera puts them in quicktime, but I've never had a problem with people viewing them on photobucket.

 

[Mike Schoonbrood]

Videos of any good length on my camera at high quality setting are 50+mb at least, I've got a few 200-400mb videos too... the point of this software isn't so much to convert the file to another format (which it can do if you want it to) but rather to make the size more managable for online use where you don't wanna upload a 50mb video to photobucket.