Creating Videos

I finally figured it out and there is now a video up on YouTube of my wife reading to our triplets.

My camera is a JVC Everio, nice camera with a big roomy hard drive and an easy interface. It's only drawback is that it creates all it's video in .mod format. Youtube doesn't recognize this format (in fact, a lot of things don't recognize it) so I had to convert it to an avi file.

I'll skip all the stuff that didn't work and jump right to what does work:

1. I downloaded MPEG Streamclip from http://www.squared5.com which supports all sorts of formats.
   
2. Streamclip needs a codec from Quicktime that you can pay Apple for...or download KL QuickTime Alternative 1.81 for free (I like free). Note: newer versions don't include the MGEG-2 codec you need.
3. If you go with the Quicktime Alternative, you will need to uninstall Quicktime before you install the alternative.
4. Install the software and enjoy. Be sure to read the document, it helped

I may be crushing the videos down a bit too much, but I'll experiment with that when I have more time.

Green Eggs and Ham

My wife read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss to the kids last night and I got it on video. I'll upload it to YouTube as soon as I can figure out how to make it smaller. It was nice watching how interested the kids got as she showed each of them the pictures.