You may have recently read the post in where I wrote a tutorial on how to remove a yellow time and date stamp from videos recorded using an MD80 video recording device, today I am not going into too much detail about things but I will give some tips and quickly explain alternative options on how to remove the time stamp by cropping and will give some other useful advice while I am at it and I hope you find the information useful.
Cropping:
First today we are going to crop a video we have recorded using an MD80 camera, so first of all load up VirtualDub, if you are not sure how please follow the first steps in the previous tutorial about removing a time stamp. So you should now have VirtualDub opened up, now proceed to opening a video file by pressing Ctrl and O on the keyboard and now press Ctrl and F and add a filter, the filter you want to add is the brightness contrast filter, do not make any adjustments unless you want to, but for some reason for me this seems to be the only way to make an option for cropping to appear in the filters. So now once cropping is clickable click that and in X1 and X2 offset you want the number 15 in each and in Y2 offset you want 30. Alternative you can just adjust Y2 offset and leave X1 and X2 offset, but this is the way I do it. Now press OK to return to the main VirtualDub window and you can now proceed to save as AVI as also instructed in the previous tutorial. But wait there is something else, I am not finished yet.
Compressing Video:
Do you hate clicking save as AVI for the simple fact of oh no I am going to end up with another huge file on my computer, well lets solve that together. First I want you to download this Xvid codec named Koepi's Xvid Codec from here. Once you have installed the codec you may need to restart VirtualDub and open the video file again and make those cropping adjustments if you need or want to. Carrying on, now that VirtualDub is opened once again press Ctrl and P on the keyboard and select the Xvid MPEG-4 Codec from the list and click configure, drag the slider between maximum quality and smallest file for whichever you like, you may want to keep all the quality or you may want a tiny file size which will have horrible video quality, I have adjusted it so that it is at a level of 5.00. Once the adjustments are made continue to click OK to return to the main window and click save as AVI. the file should now start saving and you should notice the file size will not be of many many gigabytes.
I know this has only been a quick tutorial for today but I hope you have found it useful, if you have leave a comment letting me know or if not still let me know and I will try to improve it, thanks for reading
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guides. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Saturday, 7 May 2011
MD80 camcorder instructions for removal of time stamp
MD80 as it is best well known is a tiny DV DVR camera that comes with many different names under many different brands and the only difference appears to be the price in many models, I purchased my MD80 for just under £16 which included a free micro SD card and card reader.
These cameras can be used for many things including sports and may also come in handy if you are hoping to be the next James Bond, but you may think what you have recorded have been spoilt by some giant yellow time stamp in the bottom right hand corner of the video, well what I will try to do here is make these instructions very simple so that almost everyone should be able to follow my insutructions and be able to successfully remove that time stamp
Step 1: So here is the first of many steps, just follow each step and skip no steps at all. Firstly you will want to get that video off the Micro SD card so plug the card into a USB card reader and the card should now appear as a removable disk with a capital letter assigned to it. Now you want to open that up and once that is opened you will want to go through some other folders named DCIM and 100MEDIA to find all the video files you have recorded
Step 2: Once you are in the 100MEDIA folder you want to select whatever video file you want and copy and paste it or drag it to a suitable folder or to the desktop
Step 3: You now need an application Called VirtualDub which you can download by clicking here, once you have downloaded VirtualDub extract the contents of the the archive to a suitable folder or you could extract the files to the desktop but it will make the desktop look messy. Now once you have extracted that archive to a suitable location open up the folder named plugins
Step 4: Now you want to download a VirtualDub plugin to put in the plugins folder, so download this plugin named Logoaway and copy it to the plugins folder
Step 5: Now open up VirtualDub by clicking on the VirtualDub icon and not vdub and once it has been opened click on File and after that click on Open video file or press Ctrl and O on the keyboard at the same time. Now you want to browse to where that video file is and open it in VirtualDub
Step 6: Once video file is loaded, in VirtualDub hold down Ctrl and F on the keyboard to open up Filters, once the box pops up click Add and now click Load and now browse to where the plugins folder is located and open logoaway.vdf. Now scroll down the list of filters, click on logoaway v4.01 and now click OK
Step 7: Logoaway configuration should now have loaded so now what you want to do is first click Show preview and click one of the large buttons named XY. and now you want to adjust the values for the logo border positioning and the logo border size, for the logo border position I use 325 for X and 445 for Y and for logo border size I use a width of 370 and a height of 35. Once all those adjustments are made you can adjust the sliders for Blur power and X-Y weight to whatever you think looks best, if you can not decide yourself you could try just having both sliders positioned in the middle. Now all is done and you now want to click OK to close the configuration window and click OK again on the next window
Step 8: Now click File and look for Save as AVI, click that and save the video file. Warning, the file size of the output video will be huge and you will want a video converter to convert the video to a suitable size
Step 9: The following steps are now optional, what you will now want to do is download a video converter, this one right here is free with no catches and is a very useful and simple video converter that I use regularly
Step 10: If you have downloaded Freemake Video Converter and still need help read on. Now what you want to do once the video converter is installed is open it up and simply drag and drop a video file into the main window. Once that is done it is now time to click one of those large buttons at the bottom. For today click on the button named to AVI and now you can select many presets, for today just leave it as DVD Quality and select where to save to and now click on Convert and once conversion is complete we are complete for todays guide on how to remove a time stamp from those videos
Now all you have to do is upload the video to YouTube or do whatever else you want to do with it.
I hope you found this guide useful, I am sure you found moments where it dragged on but my aim was to make a guide everyone could understand and follow and I hope I achieved that today so if I have helped you please let me know and if you want to use this guide on another website please let me know and I will be happy for you to use it if you ask me first
These cameras can be used for many things including sports and may also come in handy if you are hoping to be the next James Bond, but you may think what you have recorded have been spoilt by some giant yellow time stamp in the bottom right hand corner of the video, well what I will try to do here is make these instructions very simple so that almost everyone should be able to follow my insutructions and be able to successfully remove that time stamp
Step 1: So here is the first of many steps, just follow each step and skip no steps at all. Firstly you will want to get that video off the Micro SD card so plug the card into a USB card reader and the card should now appear as a removable disk with a capital letter assigned to it. Now you want to open that up and once that is opened you will want to go through some other folders named DCIM and 100MEDIA to find all the video files you have recorded
Step 2: Once you are in the 100MEDIA folder you want to select whatever video file you want and copy and paste it or drag it to a suitable folder or to the desktop
Step 3: You now need an application Called VirtualDub which you can download by clicking here, once you have downloaded VirtualDub extract the contents of the the archive to a suitable folder or you could extract the files to the desktop but it will make the desktop look messy. Now once you have extracted that archive to a suitable location open up the folder named plugins
Step 4: Now you want to download a VirtualDub plugin to put in the plugins folder, so download this plugin named Logoaway and copy it to the plugins folder
Step 5: Now open up VirtualDub by clicking on the VirtualDub icon and not vdub and once it has been opened click on File and after that click on Open video file or press Ctrl and O on the keyboard at the same time. Now you want to browse to where that video file is and open it in VirtualDub
Step 6: Once video file is loaded, in VirtualDub hold down Ctrl and F on the keyboard to open up Filters, once the box pops up click Add and now click Load and now browse to where the plugins folder is located and open logoaway.vdf. Now scroll down the list of filters, click on logoaway v4.01 and now click OK
Step 7: Logoaway configuration should now have loaded so now what you want to do is first click Show preview and click one of the large buttons named XY. and now you want to adjust the values for the logo border positioning and the logo border size, for the logo border position I use 325 for X and 445 for Y and for logo border size I use a width of 370 and a height of 35. Once all those adjustments are made you can adjust the sliders for Blur power and X-Y weight to whatever you think looks best, if you can not decide yourself you could try just having both sliders positioned in the middle. Now all is done and you now want to click OK to close the configuration window and click OK again on the next window
Step 8: Now click File and look for Save as AVI, click that and save the video file. Warning, the file size of the output video will be huge and you will want a video converter to convert the video to a suitable size
Step 9: The following steps are now optional, what you will now want to do is download a video converter, this one right here is free with no catches and is a very useful and simple video converter that I use regularly
Step 10: If you have downloaded Freemake Video Converter and still need help read on. Now what you want to do once the video converter is installed is open it up and simply drag and drop a video file into the main window. Once that is done it is now time to click one of those large buttons at the bottom. For today click on the button named to AVI and now you can select many presets, for today just leave it as DVD Quality and select where to save to and now click on Convert and once conversion is complete we are complete for todays guide on how to remove a time stamp from those videos
Now all you have to do is upload the video to YouTube or do whatever else you want to do with it.
I hope you found this guide useful, I am sure you found moments where it dragged on but my aim was to make a guide everyone could understand and follow and I hope I achieved that today so if I have helped you please let me know and if you want to use this guide on another website please let me know and I will be happy for you to use it if you ask me first
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
A cheap and quick way of maintaining a bike chain
There comes a time when you need to clean that chain after it has got caked in mud or has got soaked along with the rest of the bike in heavy rain, If that type of riding rings a bell you may have to look into maintaining that poor chain quite regularly to avoid rust, to ensure smooth gear changing and all the other benefits you get with having a nice clean, shiny, lubricated chain
So today I am going to show you my way of cleaning my chain in hoping that if you are looking for a cheap way of cleaning the chain quite effectively you will find this post useful, but if you do not find this useful or think it needs criticizing I would love to hear feedback as it may help me and others, but I do find my method does work well at keep my chain looking clean and operating smoothly as a chain should, so I will now begin and will provide links to products you may need
Lets begin, firstly the equipment I use is a cheap washing up brush, some cloths, some good washing up liquid, I recommend W5 from Lidl, a cheap toothbrush, and finally the most important product of all, oil and degreaser which I buy from Decathlon at a price of £6.99, both spray cans include precision heads, so the head you press down has a very short straw type attachment to ensure you spray right where you want to
So firstly, take the bike into the back garden, next you want to grab a hose and soak the chain, freewheel, chainset and the front and rear derailleur to remove any loose dirt or grime, below I have included a diagram just inase you do not know what parts are what
Next, get a bucket and add the washing up liquid and hot water, once the bucket is filled, dip in the washing up brush and scrub the chain, chain rings and freewheel (while scrubing the freewheel with the brushes remember to change gears while doing so to ensure you thoroughly clean the freewheel) to remove all unwanted grease and dirt, another thing you should do after scrubbing the chain with the brush is also have a washing up sponge, dip the sponge in the water and squeeze the sponge around the chain, using both the soft and rough side of the sponge and turn the pedals so that the chain runs through the sponge, regularly dipping the sponge back in the hot water to remove any grease and dirt from the sponge (also ensure you change the water occasionally as it will get very dirty and lose its temperature). once the chain, freewheel and chain rings are cleaned you will lightly scrub the front and rear derailleur, remembering to clean the jockey wheels on the rear derailleur to remove unwanted gunk, be gentle with both the front and rear derailleur
Once you have scrubbed, brushed and cleaned everything you should end up with an almost nice, clean, shiny chain, soap bubbles will most likely remain whether you can see them or not so now you should get the hose once more to remove any unwanted soap bubbles that will remain
Once you have finished with the hose get a cloth and dry the chain, freewheel and chain rings so they are as dry as you can get them, afterwards you may want to leave the bike to dry with the wind incase it is not dry yet, alternatively you could use a hair dryer to finish off the drying process
Once the bike is dry get the degreaser, point the can towards the chain, spray quite closely to the chain ensuring you cover the entire chain in degreaser, changing gears and turning the pedals whilst you spray the chain. Next spray the freewheel whilst turning the rear wheel to ensure you spray the entire freewheel, now you want to spray the jockey wheels, and the other important parts of the rear derailleur, now you want to spray the chain rings, continue applying degreaser until components are grease free
Leave the degreaser to work for a short while, now you want to grab a dry cloth and run the cloth over the chain ensuring you dry the chain and remove any left over grease that is stuck to the chain, you will also want to do the same to the rear derailleur, freewheel and chain rings so that you can remove left over grease off of them components too
Once dry, get the spray can of oil and apply to the chain, rear derailleur and freewheel, turning the pedals and changing gears whilst doing so to ensure complete coverage, once you have finished applying the oil, turn the pedals, go through all the gears, once that is done you want to leave the bike for a short while incase you take the bike indoors and oil drips, alternatively you could take the bike indoors, but put some layers of newspaper underneath the bike
That is the end of this guide, I know this guide may have not been as helpful as you expected, if you have not found this guide of any use all I can suggest you do is to search Google for how to clean a bike chain, where hopefully you will find guides that go more in depth and are more easily explained
If you did find this guide of some use I would love to hear from you so I can provide future guides, so what I would love is for you to comment, which you do not need an account for, you can comment anonymously
So today I am going to show you my way of cleaning my chain in hoping that if you are looking for a cheap way of cleaning the chain quite effectively you will find this post useful, but if you do not find this useful or think it needs criticizing I would love to hear feedback as it may help me and others, but I do find my method does work well at keep my chain looking clean and operating smoothly as a chain should, so I will now begin and will provide links to products you may need
Lets begin, firstly the equipment I use is a cheap washing up brush, some cloths, some good washing up liquid, I recommend W5 from Lidl, a cheap toothbrush, and finally the most important product of all, oil and degreaser which I buy from Decathlon at a price of £6.99, both spray cans include precision heads, so the head you press down has a very short straw type attachment to ensure you spray right where you want to
So firstly, take the bike into the back garden, next you want to grab a hose and soak the chain, freewheel, chainset and the front and rear derailleur to remove any loose dirt or grime, below I have included a diagram just inase you do not know what parts are what
Next, get a bucket and add the washing up liquid and hot water, once the bucket is filled, dip in the washing up brush and scrub the chain, chain rings and freewheel (while scrubing the freewheel with the brushes remember to change gears while doing so to ensure you thoroughly clean the freewheel) to remove all unwanted grease and dirt, another thing you should do after scrubbing the chain with the brush is also have a washing up sponge, dip the sponge in the water and squeeze the sponge around the chain, using both the soft and rough side of the sponge and turn the pedals so that the chain runs through the sponge, regularly dipping the sponge back in the hot water to remove any grease and dirt from the sponge (also ensure you change the water occasionally as it will get very dirty and lose its temperature). once the chain, freewheel and chain rings are cleaned you will lightly scrub the front and rear derailleur, remembering to clean the jockey wheels on the rear derailleur to remove unwanted gunk, be gentle with both the front and rear derailleur
Once you have scrubbed, brushed and cleaned everything you should end up with an almost nice, clean, shiny chain, soap bubbles will most likely remain whether you can see them or not so now you should get the hose once more to remove any unwanted soap bubbles that will remain
Once you have finished with the hose get a cloth and dry the chain, freewheel and chain rings so they are as dry as you can get them, afterwards you may want to leave the bike to dry with the wind incase it is not dry yet, alternatively you could use a hair dryer to finish off the drying process
Once the bike is dry get the degreaser, point the can towards the chain, spray quite closely to the chain ensuring you cover the entire chain in degreaser, changing gears and turning the pedals whilst you spray the chain. Next spray the freewheel whilst turning the rear wheel to ensure you spray the entire freewheel, now you want to spray the jockey wheels, and the other important parts of the rear derailleur, now you want to spray the chain rings, continue applying degreaser until components are grease free
Leave the degreaser to work for a short while, now you want to grab a dry cloth and run the cloth over the chain ensuring you dry the chain and remove any left over grease that is stuck to the chain, you will also want to do the same to the rear derailleur, freewheel and chain rings so that you can remove left over grease off of them components too
Once dry, get the spray can of oil and apply to the chain, rear derailleur and freewheel, turning the pedals and changing gears whilst doing so to ensure complete coverage, once you have finished applying the oil, turn the pedals, go through all the gears, once that is done you want to leave the bike for a short while incase you take the bike indoors and oil drips, alternatively you could take the bike indoors, but put some layers of newspaper underneath the bike
That is the end of this guide, I know this guide may have not been as helpful as you expected, if you have not found this guide of any use all I can suggest you do is to search Google for how to clean a bike chain, where hopefully you will find guides that go more in depth and are more easily explained
If you did find this guide of some use I would love to hear from you so I can provide future guides, so what I would love is for you to comment, which you do not need an account for, you can comment anonymously
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