Video rage

My Fuji FinePix S5600 records at 30.00030fps, 640×480, Motion-JPEG. Audio’s PCM, 16000Hz, mono, 128kbps.
I’ve got a 4-second animated graphic I want to use with my youtube videos, but it’s MP4, 25fps, 768×576, no audio track.

I’ve got VirtualDub and Avidemux, both free software. VirtualDub won’t load MP4 video, even with it’s import plugin. I can convert the resolution in Avidemux but can only do the frame rate to two decimal points (30.00 not 30.00030). This means it gives a sample rate mismatch in VirtualDub when trying to edit in with footage from the camera. Adjusting it in VirtualDub to 30.00030 still gives the mismatch error.

These programs only support appending as best I know, so you have to load the video segments into them in order. If I load the logo into VirtualDub, on the following video I get a mismatch and it fails. If I load it into Avidemux it stays with the logo segments lack of sound all the way through. If I give the logo a soundtrack from inside Avid, the sound on the following segment becomes gibberish. If I add a soundtrack to it in VD and load it in Avid the video scrambles.

Is there another free/cheap to use bit of software that’s simple and actually WORKS?

Video production woes

A little list of my video-capture woes.

*sigh*

Adobe Premiere only captures from DV sources. My SAA7130 capture card isn’t recognised by it.

AvidFreeDV is the same.

VirtualDub disconnects from the capture device when I try and change the capture resolution. And when I reconnect it resets to 320*240 anyway. Capture output files contain no video.
Attempting to capture with any compression crashes the capture system.

WinDVR doesn’t capture the audio due to the RealTek onboard video card. I can reinstall a separate soundcard, but few of them work on XP and none have the extra I/Os I need.

WinDVD Creator crashes when trying to connect.

When it doesn’t crash instantly, Windows Movie Maker won’t capture in anything but WMV.

So far my best option looks to be to capture in WinDVR using mpeg2 compression and capture and sync the audio manually afterwards.

And attempting to simply connect to the card in MPC bluescreens the machine.

REALLY getting pissed off with this. I bought cameras and playback units so I could actually do something with recorded video. It’s been nearly 4 fucking years and upgrading to XP has stopped me from doing any of it! VirtualDub worked PERFECTLY on Windows 2000. Not a single frame dropped at full PAL resolution, directly from my SVHS playback unit.

I can’t even connect to the fucking video source on XP without something crashing or having to physically replace hardware, let alone getting to the point of TRYING to record it!

Am I seriously going to have to BUILD a Windows 2000 machine just for recording video? Not even for editing it; just recording it??

I’d happily farm the capture out to someone else at this stage except the files produced would by several gigabytes a piece, and getting them onto this machine to edit them would be an equal nightmare!

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]