Sony Movieshaker 3.1 MMV MicroMV Import Program .rar
Leana Eckes
Sony's MICROMV format has brought the trend of miniaturizing videoequipment to a whole new level. If you thought "Mini" DV tapes andcamcorders were small, then this next step was certainly to "micro" --with 70 percent smaller tape cartridges, and cameras that weigh under one pound.Even compared to Mini-DV camcorders, these MICROMV units are significantlylighter to pack and carry, and small enough skip the camera case and just carryin a coat pocket (www.sony.com/micromv).
As this kind of equipment gets smaller and smaller, however, there comes apoint when the trade-offs become too severe, as the LCD screens get too small toview details and the buttons become too tiny to control reliably with yourfingers. These really are personal preferences, however, and depend on how thecamcorder fits into your hands and with your shooting style.
But MICROMV also introduces another significant trade-off: while thesecamcorders connect to your computer with a FireWire interface, they do notrecord digital video in DV format. As a result, they do not interface directlywith the wide variety of video editing and DVD authoring tools that can captureand process video directly from DV equipment. Instead, Sony provides its ownMovieShaker video editing application with to import and edit digital video.MovieShaker also can convert MICROMV video to other formats (including DV), andconvert video files back to MICROMV format to export back to the camera.
This situation improved in early 2003, as Sony introduced new MICROMV cameramodels. At the same time, new versions of the Pinnacle Studio 8 and UleadVideoStudio 7 consumer video editing tools were introduced with some MICROMVsupport. However, you will see from my experience in working with these newproducts, the MICROMV experience is still nowhere near as smooth as working inDV format.
The basic concept with MICROMV was to shrink the size of the tape cartridgein order to also reduce the size of camcorders that use the format. As a result,there is less tape surface in the cartridge than in a Mini-DV cassette, whichmeans fewer bits available to store an hour of video on a tape. As a result,MICROMV requires more aggressive compression of the video data.
DV compresses video to 25 Mbps (million bits per second), which is relativelylight compression that gives very high quality video. (If you compare this tousing JPEG compression on each individual frame as if it were a digital photo,it's equivalent to compressing 720 x 480 photos to around 100 KB, which still isplenty of bits for great looking images.)
In comparison, video for DVD is typically compressed to around 4 to 6 Mbpsusing the MPEG-2 format. Since it is highly compressed, MPEG is thought of as adelivery format for the final output of an edited production, while DV is anediting and archival format to save the original video. While DV compression canbe done in real time on low-cost chips in any DV camcorder, getting greatlooking MPEG video for DVD requires significantly more processing and sometimesmanual tweaking.
For MICROMV, Sony also uses MPEG-2 format, but at a higher 12 Mbps rate. Byincreasing the data rate, the camcorder hardware can be designed to still creategood-looking video while compressing in real time. You may notice more artifactssuch as color fringing than with DV, especially in difficult shooting situation,but the end result is certainly quite good quality. MICROMV also is prone tointroducing blockiness at the start of clips and a freeze-frame at the end ofeach clip, so you will need to be careful to keep the camera running a littlelonger so you can trim your captured clips.
But using MPEG-2 for MICROMV creates other trade-offs. First, the format isincompatible with the wide variety of existing software that can interface to DVcamcorders through FireWire connections. After the DV / FireWire interfacefinally has become ubiquitous and reliable, we're back to square one inrequiring special software to interface to video capture hardware.
Second, the MPEG data from the MICROMV camcorders is stored as a MPEG-2"transport" stream, a format for packaging video intended fortransmitting data. Unfortunately, most video editing tools are designed to readMPEG-2 "program" streams, the expected format for packaging andstoring MPEG-2 video and audio in files. This means that the MMV files createdby Sony's MovieShaker application cannot be read by many video player andediting tools.
Finally, because of the basic nature of MPEG-2 compression, video files inMPEG-2 format are difficult to rapidly search, and not really amenable toframe-accurate editing. Unlike DV, which compresses each frame individually,MPEG-2 achieves much better compression by storing some frames only asdifferences from adjacent frames. After all, since video frames are shot only1/30th of a second apart, consecutive frames really do not change very much.MPEG takes advantage of this by analyzing the movement between frames (from apanning camera or motion in the scene), and then describing a frame in terms ofbackground and foreground information from adjacent frames.
MPEG-2 uses an "IBP" compression pattern, with groups of framesstarting with a larger I (Intra) frame, compressed individually, followed bysmaller P and B difference frames (Predicted and Bidirectional). The B framesactually use difference information from both proceeding and following frames.(MPEG-1 uses a much simpler format, and therefore is easier to edit butobviously does not produce the same compression quality.)
Now imagine trying to rapidly shuttle through a MPEG-2 video stream. Youcannot easily jump to a specific frame, since consecutive frames vary wildly insize. If you start trying to decode an arbitrary P or B frame you will end upwith a blocky mess, because they depend on previous and even following framesthat you do not have available.
Even worse, even if you find the right frame where you want to make aframe-accurate edit, the repeating IBP pattern of the data means that you cannotsimply slap in a new frame exactly where you want it. You can either just forceall edits to the closest I frame, as some applications do, or you need touncompress the entire IBP group, edit in your changes, and then recompress theblock again. This is not only a lot of work, but continued decompression andrecompression of already heavily-compressed MPEG-2 video will quickly causevisible artifacts.
More fundamentally, since MPEG-2 is designed as a delivery medium for playingfull-motion video, when you step in slow motion through individual frames thestand-alone I frames clearly look better than the P and B difference frames. Asa result, you may not like the visual effect of a cut at the exact frame whereyou would like to make it.
As a result of all this, while many video player applications now can playMPEG-2 files, they can be sluggish when skipping or shuttling through MPEG-2files, much less when trying to step backwards. Similarly, many video editingtools really are not designed for MPEG-2 editing. They may import MPEG-2material, but again they struggle when moving and positioning within the files,and do not support actually editing the IBP data, but instead decompress into amore convenient format.
Working with MPEG-2 really requires an editor that understands and processesMPEG-2 in its native format. Otherwise, your best solution is to transcode fromMPEG-2 to a better-supported format like DV to use for editing in your favoriteapplications.
The DCR-IP55 has several interesting design elements to accommodate its smallsize (15 oz without battery, and 2 3/8 x 2 7/8 x 5 1/8"). Since there islimited room for dedicated buttons on the case, the swing-out 2 1/2" LCDhas a touch screen, with both play controls and access to the menus through atabbed interface. Sony also designed a swing-down handgrip on one side of thecam to make it easier to hold the camera steady. The handgrip covers the tapedoor, and actually holds the removable battery.
All MICROMV camcorders include FireWire interfaces, also called IEEE 1394, oriLINK by Sony. The cassettes hold 60 minutes of video. All MICROMV cassettesinclude a 64 Kb Cassette Memory chip that provides a visual index of the clipson the tape.
Sony's MovieShaker application version 3.1 ships with the MICROMVcamera, and is explicitly designed to support the format and camera features onWindows machines. It imports and exports clips directly from and to the camera,and reads and writes clips to disk in MMV format.
The MovieShaker interface has a center Monitor panel area, with a Clip trayon the left, a Tool panel on the right, and the Product tray on along thebottom. The MovieShaker workflow follows the tabs above the Monitor to progressfrom Capture to Editing, first importing clips into the Clip tray, thenassembling them as a storyboard in the Product tray, applying edits from theTool palettes for Effects, Text, Transitions, and Narration, and then clickingExport to save the resulting movie.
One major advantage of using MovieShaker for importing from the camera is theability to preview the clips stored on the tape. Click the Scan button under theCapture tab, and MovieShaker will shuttle rapidly through the tape, extractthumbnails for each clip, and display them in the Index tray in the Toolpalette. You then can select individual clips and click Batch Capture to haveMovieShaker capture them. Or click Dubbing to capture all the index clips fromthe tape.
You also can use MovieShaker to import and export video from and to thecamera, and to convert to DV or another format to process the video using yourother favorite tools. The MMV files created by MovieShaker are in MPEG-2transport stream format, and therefore are not directly readable by manyapplications. I found that QuickTime Player 6 could import and play some MMVfiles reasonably well, although it could not handle others. Microsoft MediaPlayer also could play the files, but only after they were renamed to MPG.
When you use MovieShaker to convert to DV format, it warns that the operationis going to take a long time. This is irritating in these days of real-timesoftware DV to MPEG transcoding and DV-based previews, but not much slower thansimilar applications.
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