Loading an Edited Video Back onto Canon S1IS for use as a playback device

I have a Canon S1IS digital camera, which takes some pretty nice video
(for a still camera).

I would like to be able to upload a short edited video, which may
contain stills as well as motion video from several sources other than
this camera, back to the S1IS and play it back on the camera's display
(and through the camera's analog outputs).

The purpose of doing this is to use the camera as a handy "demo device"
by hooking it to a big-screen TV at a bar, and playing a short (5-10
minutes) video made in Windows Movie Maker. Failing this, I will have
to buy a portable DVD player and make DVDs of the videos.

The question is - what format does the video need to be in, so that it
can be put back onto a compactflash card and played in the S1IS camera,
and where can I download a software utility to convert to this format?
Is this offered in some of the Canon utilities packages?

If I look at the files generated by the S1IS, they use the generic
extension .AVI. Gspot lists them as being of the form "MJPEG" (motion
jpeg?), and I've heard some refer to the S1IS format as "MPEG-4".

thanks,

Martin

 

www.videohelp.com for a comprehensive list of links to apps and tutorials.

Virtualdub is a good, free, program that should let you do the cutting
and joining you want.

 

Ray,

I don't need anything else to do the editing to create my content.
What I'm looking for is a way to put the video back onto the camera for
playback.

Martin

 

John,

Any idea why it didn't work on your S2IS? What format did you put the
movie into for the experiment?

Martin

 

The problem isn't the video format. Canon (like every other
camera manufacturer) has their own file indexing system. Even
if an edited MJPEG is in the proper format, the camera won't
see or display it unless it's indexed properly.

I believe you can get the particulars of Canon's indexing system
with their SDK, but it's probably far more hassle than it's worth.
Just get a low-end portable DVD player and be done with it.

 

Putting it onto the flash card is not the problem. You can write to a
flashcard with any $20 flashcard reader/writer. Your problem is that you
have to put BACK onto the flashcard, video in a format that your camera
will read. Gspot says that it is Mjpeg so thats the format it needs to
stay in.

 

Actually, I believe the format is the key issue. It's not hard to
replicate the file index, just use one from an already-stored clip that
you delete. I've put edited JPG photos back onto the flash memory of
several cameras, and they displayed just fine. With the edited video,
Moviemaker can't output in the original MJPEG or MPEG-4 or whatever
format, it can only output in WMV or one specific embodiment of AVI
(which has it's own problems that I've documented in other threads).

I'm looking for someone who has successfully recoded a video back to
the original Canon-used format. Accomplishing that, I believe file
names and indexing will be a minor issue.

Of course, I already know how to make DVDs, but I'm interested in the
elegant solution that would prevent me from having to pack around an
additional piece of hardware that would have only one purpose (playback
of a 5-minute video clip), when my camera is always with me and can
perform the same function.

best regards,

Martin

 

My understanding is that "AVI" is not a specfic format, only a generic
"wrapper" that can actually contain many different things. For
example, uncompressed DV and DivX may both use the .AVI file extension,
but they are very different. Canon's .AVI is something else, and I'm
hoping to find someone who can identify and transcode to it.

best regards,

Martin

 

Correct. Now you're back on track with my original question - how to
recode a Windows Moviemaker output to the specific data type used by
Canon.

best regards,

Martin

 

But that WAS what I answered, suggesting that you could use Virtualdub
rather than windows moviemaker.

Still, I see from some other poster that the Canon expects some specific
indexing that only it does when writing to the card, so, taking a file
from moviemaker, converting it to a mp4 (mjpeg it sounds like from your
intital post and then just copying it to the card might not be expected
to work.

Reviews of the camera suggest you can do crude editing of the file right
on the camera, which, at the end of the day, could be less hassle than
capturing it to moviemaker, exporting whatever format moviemaker
supports, finding an app with codec to covert that back to mjpeg,
getting it back onto the card, hoping the camera sees the file on the
card and reads it.

 

If it is mjpeg as you suspect, then get a demo version of this codec and
see if you can take what you export out of moviemaker (as I don't know
anything about moviemaker, I don't have any idea if third party codecs
are supported), and re-encode it to mjpeg and go from there.

At this point, I think your on trial and error, trying and eliminating
solutions.

 

Ooops the link would be helpful.

http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/technicalsV3.htm

 

Total Video Converter could be the 'easy button' solution.

 

Unfortunately, as I noted in the original post, the finished video
consists of material from several sources, so crude editing on the
camera isn't an option. It will have to be recoded from whatever is
output from the editing software. For Movie Maker, this means recoding
from WMA or AVI. DV-NTSC (in Moviemaker) is a high bitrate AVI bastard
that is compatible with some, but not all, transcoding routines. Auto
Gordian Knot and Nero 6 both have problems with it.

I followed your link from another part of this thread, pointing to the
trial version utility, and will give that a shot. It's the best (or
only) potentially-compatible suggestion I've seen.

Thanks!

Martin

 

Please let us know if you discover a way to do this. My
understanding is that Canon's indexing is not just a set of
filename pointers. It contains more info, such as thumbnail
and splice pointers, etc which is not stored in the movie files,
and while most of this info conforms to the DCF, some of it
is Canon-specific.