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I need to complete 4 specific tasks on my videos.

  1. Stabilize.
  2. Crop to Anamorphic
  3. Convert resolution up or down to 720p
  4. Convert to mp4 (H.264)

Can someone point my in the right direction to the best free tools to complete these tasks? I'm using Handbrake to do all my -> mp4 conversion. I've tried VDUB with DeShaker and Mercelli (not free) for stabilization. Mercelli only lets me output to wmv or mpg but it compresses and creates a lot of pixelation in the process. Not to mention it crashes more then Windows 95. DeShaker is ok, but if the person taking the video moves around at all, it distorts and bends a lot in the background. I can crop to anamorphic from Handbrake but it doesn't let me scale the videos up to 1280x720. Is there a good free tool that will do all of these?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks -Craig

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  • Craig, it might be time to get yourself a camera that shoots in HD from the start. (That is if I understand this situation correctly). You're gonna save so much time getting it right from the start that it will probably pay for the new camera. There are plenty of point and shoot pocket cameras that can shoot both 720p and 1080p for under $500 but you will not get the manual controls until you spend about 50% more.
    – filzilla
    May 5, 2012 at 0:06
  • I have a camera now that does 1080p. My company makes some very unique products for very specific purposes. Most don't last in production for more then 3 or 4 years. We have videos of some products that we want to show in the presentation from 10 years ago. As much as I would love to retake new videos in HD, it's simply impossible. The product probably doesn't even exist anymore. I gotta work with what I've got.
    – Albion
    May 5, 2012 at 16:33
  • I can dig that.
    – filzilla
    May 7, 2012 at 18:44

2 Answers 2

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You can download a FREE 30 trail version of Vegas Pro 11 from Sony.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro

I've have Vegas Pro 10 and I have used these features: Stabilize, Convert resolution down to 720p, and convert (render) to MP4.

I never convert resolution up, it just looks terrible (see my comments above).

By "Crop to Anamorphic", I am assuming you mean to convert 4:3 to 16:9, I have not tried this with Vegas as all my originals are already 16:9 HD. So you might want to google for that part.

If you go this route search YouTube for tutorials on each item as it will speed up your learning curve considerably.

Caution: if you want to take a 4:3 SD video and make it into a 720p 16:9 HD it's just gonna look terrible. Why? Because you are asking the software to expand the resolution, this never looks good. It's ok to reduce resolution say go from 1920 X 1080 and step it down to 720p, that's just fine, but when you try to go the other way you are asking the software to essentially make up material that is not there.

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Adobe Premiere Elements is like $80 and does all that including stabilization. I use Premiere pro on my main comp and you elements on my backup computer since I couldn't afford another copy. It's not free but I've looked for free editors and you won't find anything free that does stabilization.

Elements project files can be imported in to Premiere Pro so you can work on something and send the project file, files and folder to a pro and he can work with it from there.

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