Hello,

I'm a new member here with the "Power User" account and just completed a huge task of uploading over 1000 photos of my trip to London, France, Egypt & Ethiopia this past June. This also included 23 videos I took with my Canon S3 IS camera. Many of my videos were longer than the 2:30 time allottment for my video account. I managed to figure out how to use Windows Movie Maker to trim some of my videos, either by using WMM to split my videos into two smaller videos by dragging the frames one by one into the story board (not sure if I have that description correct) and saving the movie to my desktop this way for the upload, or else I simply removed the last frame or two of a video in WMM and cut down it's size that way. This worked for 22 of my 23 vids, and it means that I'll have some videos which are labeled "Egypt - Part 1, Egypt Part 2, etc. It's a little disjointed for the viewer but I can live with this - whatever I have to do to get them uploaded.

But I'm having problems editing one of my vids in this manner- one that is my favorite of the entire trip. This problematic video is 3:45 long and when I pull up WMM I see that it has only two frames, rather than several like many of the other videos. I was able to capture frame one and save it to my desktop and upload it to smugmug with no problems. But the other frame of this video is about 2:48 long and I cannot upload it to smugmug because it's over the time limit, nor can I find a way to split this one last frame in WMM. I would really like to get this video up on smugmug for my family and friends to see. I'm new at this and I'm trying to learn as much about video editing as I can, but given my ignorance and constaints using Windows Movie Maker I'm not sure if I can do it with this program. On the other hand, maybe some of you more experienced video folks might have a suggestion that can help me.

Thank you,

Cliff
Seattle, WA

I would suggest VirtualDub - this is a free product. See http://www.virtualdub.org/

It is a very good video editing product, but does not have a very obvious user interface. I suggest you read the help before trying to figure it out yourself. Once you understand it, it is very easy and quick to trim video.

Important: if you simply want to trim down video, make sure to choose "direct stream copy" under both Video and Audio.

To trim video:
a) Load the video (e.g., AVI file)
b) Choose "Direct Stream Copy" under both the Video and Audio menus
c) Use the slidebar to go to where you want the trimmed video to start
d) Press the Home key
e) Use the slidebar to where you want the trimmed video to end
f) Press the End key
g) Press F7 to save, specify new file name

That's it.

Thanks,

Tom K.