So much ski video to edit...

So I've finally decided to have a go at the 72 gigs of video we took with Jon's GoPro on our epic ski trip. Well it's been a few weeks now so what's been holding me back you ask? Ok, you didn't but I'm gonna tell you anyway.

Here's the deal: the GoPro HD takes ready to view HD video (duh!) but that's not the tricky part. Here's some info from their site.

HD Video Resolution Modes:

• 1080p = 1920x1080 pixels (16:9), 30 fps, 15 Mbit/s data rate
• 960p = 1280x960 pixels (4:3), 30 fps, 12 Mbit/s data rate
• 720p = 1280x720 pixels (16:9), 60 fps, 15 Mbit/s data rate
• 720p = 1280x720 pixels (16:9), 30 fps, 8 Mbit/s data rate
• WVGA = 848x480 pixels (16:9), 60 fps, 8 Mbit/s data rate

Video Format: H.264 compression, saved as Windows- & Mac-compatible MPEG4 (.mp4) file

While it's impressive, that's the killer: H.264 .mp4 file

If you've download HD videos off YouTube before you'd know that the file is also an mp4 which is more or less the same type of video the GoPro takes.

What does that mean? Well, I guess to save space on your SD card the GoPro exports highly compressed video like that to save space and so you can upload/watch it right away. The bad news is that this type of video isn't really meant to be edited, and that's the problem.

So what's the solutions? Well we have to convert it into a format recognized by Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro so we can edit it. That's sort of counter-productive, but there's no other way to directly edit it...that we know of.

Oh well, gotta get it started somehow. It's too bad Jon's overseas or we could have split the video conversion half/half.