Making movies with Sony Handycam DCR-SX30, Ubuntu Linux and Kino

The Sony Handycam DCR-SX30 is a digital video recorder (DVR), that stores video clips in the MPEG program stream (PS, MPEG-PS) container format, that multiplexes one digital video channel and two digital audio channels. The video channel is MPEG-2 at a 16:9 wide screen frame resolution (dimension) of 720 x 576 pixels at a rate of 25 frames per second (fps). The digital audio channels is Dolby Digital (AC-3) at a sample rate of 48 kHz and 256 kbps. The DVR can record in three different qualities. These are named HQ, SP and LP. However, these all use the same aspect, resolution, frame rates and so on.

PS is used on stable media, such as a memory stick or a digital video disc (DVD). The related MPEG transport stream (TS, MPEG-TS) is used in unstable media, such as transmitting over the internet.

In this example, we will go through the proces of making a video from the video clips.

We turn the DVR on and attach the USB cable to the DVR and the computer. On the DVR, we select access to internal or external memory (memory stick) as necessary. The operating system Ubuntu presents the MPEG-PS video clips, which we transfer to a local directory. It is not recommended to edit video clips, that is stored on a network file system. This might result in problems – and the operating system behind the network file system might even backup the huge amounts of temporary files. We go through each raw video clip and delete the bad video clips.

In our example, the video editing program Kino is not installed yet. We install it from Applications and Ubuntu Software Center. We modify the menu, so that Kino will start with the PulseAudio OSS Prapper. This is done by prefixing the command with “padsp”. This is the recommended way to be able to listen to audio in Kino as it does not support PulseAudio, which is default in later versions of Ubuntu.

We are now ready to edit our video clips from the DVR. We go to the menu, Applications, Sound & Video and start Kino. We press Ctrl+P and go through the options. Under “Defaults”, we set “Normalisation” to “PAL”, “Audio” to “48kHz Stereo” and “Aspect Ration” to “16:9″. We click the icon for “Insert a file after the current scene” and choose our first video clip. Kino offers to import and convert our video clip into raw digital video (DV, DV-DIF) format, which is used in video editing. We repeat this for every video clip.

We are now ready to edit the video clips. We go to Edit. The purpose of this step is to end up with a series of scenes. Use the drag, cut, copy, paste, split, join and timeline tools. Keep it as simple and as short as possible. Save the project at this point.

We can now add special effects as necessary. This is done in FX. There are two types of effects. One is scene effects. One is transition effects. The scene effects are applied (rendered) on one scene at a time. If transitions effects is needed, such as cross fading, then render these. If titles are needed, then prepare a scene of reading time length and render these. 5 sec is fine for a title, that fade in and out. Use a font, that is smooth and thick. This makes it more readable. If audio dubbing or mixing is needed, such as adding background music, then render these. If other video or audio filters are needed, then render these. Kino is now ready to export the final movie. Save.

Now, we are almost done. We will now want to export our series of scenes into the final movie. This is done in Export. We select every 1 frame of all.

There are different movie formats available. You should choose the movie format, that suits your purpose. If your final movie is to be uploaded to YouTube or Facebook, you might want to choose Flash. This format is also a good choice for MPEG1 video clips with bad frame rates and aspect settings. In our example, we go to “Other”, set “File” to the filename of the final movie without an extension, set “Tool” to “XviD MPEG-4 AVI Single Pass (MEncoder)” and set “Profile” to “High Quality (Full size, VBR, QPEL)”. We click “Export”.

We now have a smooth, deinterlaced final video. The resolution is 1024×576 pixels, which is the correct aspect ratio of 16:9. The frame rate is 25 fps. The audio is 48 kHz MP3 stereo.

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