Quick Media Converter Settings

Hi everyone. I don't know if any of you are still out there, it's been so long since I"ve posted.

I know our beloved SC-MX20 has pretty much become obsolete. But those of you, like me, that can't afford an upgrade, we still use it all the time.

I've only recently upgraded to Windows 7. Vista, with all it's updates, became so bloated and slow that doing any video editing on it became impossible. I've also shunned my beloved Dell for an HP. So far I'm very happy with Windows 7's snappy-ness and the HP's speed and responsiveness.

Rather that fight with my program, The Fix, which I am glad so many of you are happy with, I've decided to go with something that I know works. Many of you have tried Quick Media Converter, so I thought you might like to see the settings I plugged in to get the same results as The Fix.

Note that this is in expert mode. I did not put anything in the audio options, but if you need it, you can resync the audio just like in The Fix and that screen is pretty self explanatory so I"m not going to post it.

The bitrate is 7904kbps, copied from the properties of the original mp4 file right out of the camera. Same with frame rate. I set the aspect ratio to 16:9 and I also set the width and height to get the proper ratio that the camera does not set in widescreen mode. W 720, H 405. If you want to get the 1080p size you can put in W 1080, H 608.

In the command line, put in -deinterlace if you want those blocky lines removed.

And that's it. On my HP it's super fast. Hope this works for you.

A firmware fault

I discovered a fault in the firmware that was really heartbreaking, but easy enough to work around.

My wife was recording my daughter's baptism. When she was done, she didn't push the record button, she just shut the camera off.

Now, almost every other electronic device I have, my computer, my cell phone, etc. They all go through a shut down routine. They finish and close what they were doing before the power goes off.

The Samsung SC-MX20, however, just powers off. It doesn't stop what it's doing, it just shuts off.

When recording, just powering off does not save the file you are recording, it's just gone. My daughter's baptism was not recorded.

It should have been easy enough to build in a shut down routine that does the same as pushing the record button to save your movie.

I really wish Samsung would release a new firmware update to fix these issues. I know I'm not the only out here that is having a love/hate relationship with this camera.

Remember: Always end your recording by pushing the record button BEFORE powering off your camera.

So How Did You Use Your Camera This Christmas?

What did you record with your camera this holiday season? I've captured several hours of Christmas morning and as a result I've discovered an issue.

When recording for a really long stretch, it results in really large files. Obviously, but what's the issue? Well, on my cheap, off the shelf, Compaq desktop with Windows Vista and 1 gig of memory, the file completely crashes the system, locking up everything and making it impossible to edit it or do anything else with it.

The good news is, my wife's laptop, from Dell, has 3 gig of memory and I am able to edit it into smaller chunks and work with it.

Have you had this issue? It's not really an issue with the camera, rather my computer, but I thought I'd mention it. The best way to deal with this is to utilize your record button to pause recording every now and then. When you do this, the camera quits the file it's creating and starts a new one. It does take a couple of seconds to do that, but with practice you can avoid missing some precious moments.

The Samsung SC-MX20's Three Big Problems and a One Stop Fix

I got the Samsung SC-MX20 for Father's day this year. I had done a little research and had come to the conclusion that this was the best camera for the money we were able to spend. Being a Father of a large family, having a video camera is important, especially when grandmas and other extended family live far away.

So I read the reviews, checked the websites, then went to Wal-Mart and plunked down the money on a brand new Samsung SC-MX20 and a memory card to go with it.

Unfortunately, my research didn't prepare me for the issues that I would have. I was disappointed at first, but I was impressed with the SC-MX20's ease of use, breathtakingly long battery life and just general good looks. (I got the red one, it looks like Iron Man's camera!) But right out of the box there are three big issues that no one bothered to mention.

So, if you just bought the camera and are facing one of these frustrations with Samsung's SC-MX20, then hold tight, I have a fix for you.

Issue 1: Video doesn't work right away with Windows Movie Maker

The Samsung SC-MX20 comes bundled with Cyberlink Media Show. This is an issue in and of itself, but I have covered that in other blog posts. (Conclusion, use the disk as a coaster.) But I have seen many many comments saying the videos from the camera don't work with Windows Movie Maker.

This isn't really a bug, it was a choice by the camera makers. The format used is MP4, which you probably know better as Quick Time. It is a really good format that doesn't cause much distortion.

However, when you plug in your Samsung SC-MX20 and move your files to your computer and try to drop them into Windows Movie Maker, they won't work. For whatever reason (probably because it's Microsoft) they did not allow native support for MP4 files.

So, before you can use the MP4 files from your camera, you will have to convert them to a format that Windows Movie Maker likes. There are many ways to do this. Do a Google for "convert MP4 to Windows Movie Maker" and you will get thousands of hits. I have a personal favorite, but I can't honestly say that one method is better than any other.

However, there are other issues with the videos that come from this camera, and I do have an all-in-one solution, so keep reading.


Issue 2: Videos filmed in wide screen (16:9) format do not play that way on my computer


This is a bug, but one that is easy to overcome. Here's the issue: When filming with the wide screen option on the camera selected, your videos look good on the camera, but when you copy them to your computer and play them with Quick Time, they are squashed and stretched. (To make matters more confusing, if you do use the Cyberlink MediaShow program, they look fine, but then when you save them from there, they are still squashed and stretched.)

So what happened? I don't fully understand the issue myself, but my understanding is that the format has a "flag" that needs to be set in order for your computer to play it in the right format. The designers of the firmware for the Samsung SC-MX20, for some reason, forgot to have the camera set this "flag", leaving your videos squashed and stretched.

So how to fix it? Well, again, there are many ways to do it. As in the previous issue, you can use just about any converter program to re-format your video. But, again, I do have an all-in-one fix coming up. Keep reading!

Issue 3: What's with all these lines? It looks terrible!

When filming in wide-screen format, the Samsung SC-MX20 uses a method called "interlacing" to keep the file size manageable or something. I don't fully understand it, but for whatever reason, it's what they decided to do. As a result, even if you have it appear in wide-screen (see previous issue), it is full of lines.

Again, this isn't necessarily a bug, but in the day and age of high-definition displays, interlacing is not only unnecessary, it's ugly. I don't know why they chose this method for the videos, but it's easy to fix.

Which brings us to what you've been waiting for. How does one deal with all these issues without having to convert, re-convert, and generally degrade the image quality of the videos from the Samsung SC-MX20?

The Answer:

(Click on icon to download)

I created this all-in-one Repairer/Converter for you. It's takes the videos from your Samsung SC-MX20 and fixes all your problems. The best part is, it does it all in one shot!

I have written up a how-to on this post, so go there for details on how to use it. (The newest version of The Answer has an option to re-render your videos in hi-def format too! It's doesn't make your videos hi-def, but it stretches them to that size making them more friendly for that format.)

Hope this helps you! If you have other issues or have any great tips or tricks or samples you want to share, please, leave me a comment.

Maybe we can learn something here

I stumbled across this blog yesterday. It talks about still photography, but many of the principles apply to videography as well.

Stop Shooting Auto

From MediaShow to Movie Maker

I have discussed my frustration with the MediaShow software that came bundled with the Samsung SC-MX20 on this blog before so I won't get into that again. But many people are asking how to transfer videos they have edited with MediaShow to Movie Maker.

It's really very easy. (Please see the documentation on MediaShow for instructions on how to edit your videos.) If you can get MediaShow to work (I have never been able to get it to properly do anything) and have made edits to your videos, when you hit the "back" button in MediaShow, it creates a new copy of your videos in the folder you imported them into. Right-click on the new copy and choose "locate on disk".

You will see that it is still an MP4 file, but in spite of looking right in MediaShow, it still has the wide-screen and interlacing problems that it did coming out of the camera.

Using the nifty little program I created (available to the right in the downloads section) you can then repair the video that includes the edits you made in MediaShow as well as convert it to mpg format to use in Windows Movie maker.

I know that was all kind of quick and dirty, but if you need specific help, please leave a comment and I will be glad to help you.

Tutorial - Rendering SC-MX20 video in HD for Youtube - Freeware

I saw other tutorials on YouTube, but many of them told you to download pirated software. And even then, it was something complex and hard to use.

Here's my version. Fast, Free, Easy, and did I mention Free? Not to mention legal.