Mute Swan of Lost Lagoon [video]

I’m still trying to figure out a decent work flow for doing video but I thought I would give it another go today. Well I took the following video a while ago but tried processing it today. Still not quite what I want though and it seems there are black bars on the left and right side of it.

While out and about in Lost Lagoon (granted not today but on 6th of May) we came across a Mute Swan who was having to build up her nest due to the water levels of the Lagoon.  What we thought was funny was she kept trying to pull the same branch over and over again into her nest but it kept being uncooperative with her. I switch the camera over to video and recorded a quick 30 second clip.

She did it for a good 10 minutes. Not sure if she did not realize it was the same branch, or she could not quite figure out why it kept going back to the place she picked it up from.

I also uploaded the video to Vimeo instead of Flickr this time. No real reason for using a different service but thought I would put it there for fun.

Video Info

I took the 30 second clip from my Canon 7D (which uses the h.264 codec) and had to figure out how to convert it to a usable editable format that I could easily load into Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0. I decided to use MPEG Streamclip to convert the file using the DVCPRO codec which hopefully would retain the 1080p resolution.

I also figured out how to add text at various points during the video itself. I know it’s pretty cheesy, but I’m learning the video side of my camera. The video quality (to me) doesn’t seem spectacular, but that could have been also the lighting and SHS (Shaky Hand Syndrome) while trying to take the video.

Perhaps next time I’ll figure out how to add audio tracks to videos. I’m just hoping I can figure out an easier way to edit videos from my camera without spending all day trying to find the best settings. I also noticed that there are black bars on the left and right of the video as well. Not sure why, I’ve tried to export the video as an MPEG4 at 1280×720 at 29.97fps. The original 30 sec clip at 1080p is 177MB whereas the above video is about 1/3 the file size. Anyone edit videos on a Windows based computer using Adobe Premiere Elements? I need tips!