Edit Functions in HD2000

I found the built-in editing functions of the HD2000 extremely useful while preparing my videos for uploading into Vimeo. Since I have only the free Vimeo account, I can only upload one HD video per week (just as well or I'll be spending all my time editing my videos), up to 500MB size. Since it also take ages to upload in Vimeo, I have decided to limit my videos to be within 3 minutes which is about 3 hours of uploading time in my case. Thus I need to do a lot of trimming and joining all the short videos that was shot by my wife.

This is where I use a lot of the built in editing functions of Cut and Join in the HD2000. At times I just wish there is also an "Unjoin" function and that would make it complete. Before I proceed to describe the two built in editing functions, here is the link to my latest video uploaded in Vimeo. This one was taken in a public park at the foot of the Pamukkale travertine in the early evening. As most of the park was in shade, it was a good test of the HD2000 as my wife zoomed and panned all over the place from the sunlit travertine to the shaded stream, the open sky to the shimmering water of the lake; the distant trees to a close-up of the ducks and everything else in between. There was also the walking shot as she approached the lake. So you can see how the HD2000 performed in the changing conditions.

Here is the Vimeo link, http://www.vimeo.com/5798898

Despite all the bad press of the poor Image Stabilisation, I think the HD2000 did reasonable well as the shots were completely hand-held and unprocessed. But you can see the auto exposure, auto focus and auto White Balance hard at work as the lighting conditions changed rapidly. It seems a bit slow but it gives that artistic feel.

OK back to the editing functions. There are just two of them - Cut and Join.

The Join function is to join several videos into one big video and the limit is that you can only join a maximum of 9 clips at any one time and the 4GB file size limit also applies. You just simply select the clips to join in the order you want by pressing the Set button and numbers will appear on the clips that are selected so that you see if that is the right order.

Then you press the Record button to save the joined videos and you have a choice to save it as a new video or overwrite the existing videos and you can view the joined videos before actually saving it.



The next is the Cut function. As this is very basic, you can only set two cut points.

Thus you can only cut or save part of the video in the beginning, the end or somewhere in between. To cut more you will have to repeat the process. The only good thing is that by toggling the Set button down you can reverse the portion to be deleted and to be saved. Just as in the Join function, you can save the video as new or overwrite the existing video and to view the edited video before actually saving it.

Since there is no undo function, I sometime wish that there is an "Unjoin" function since at times I want to breakup what is already joined. But you can do it in a roundabout way by using the Cut function twice. Still these two edit functions are very useful as I could not find a video editing software so far that can edit and save the file back in the original HD2000 format which can be played back by the camcorder. I think not many other camcorders has built in editing functions, all will just have the delete video function.

So enjoy your HD2000.

Ronald Kwok

http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok