Video production: rendering

Self-tutoring about video production: the tutor shares some primary knowledge he just learned.

For Christmas my son James got a camera meant to film action in first-person, the way so many parkour YouTubers do. We read its manual, bought the microSD card, etc, to get it ready. Then came the time for that first test: would it film action that could be played back from a media player?

James took some footage, then we loaded it on a computer and opened it with the media player. The frame transition was choppy, and painfully slow.

James asked if we could try it on a newer computer we have. We did so, and the clip did play like you’d hope. “I guess it’s the computer,” James commented: “the camera does work.”

“True,” I said, “but the old computer plays YouTube videos, no problem. Why does it have trouble with video from the camera?”

“That’s because it hasn’t been rendered,” he commented. “A rendering program changes the footage so it plays properly.”

I didn’t know about rendering; I’ve no training in video production. However, my kids do, and we have Movie Maker installed on the old computer (that wouldn’t play James’s camera footage very well).

I wondered: would rendering that footage make it playable on the old computer?

DarkShak, on YouTube, explains how to accomplish rendering, as far as I understand. I followed his instructions, then played the result on the media player: it plays perfectly, just like you’d expect on YouTube.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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