Used my camera for the first time today in the snow, using the gopro editing software and it seems to be taking an absolute age to convert the files, I have done the clipping and followed the online tutorial but when I hit convert it has been running for about 20mins and still showing 0% progress, any ideas to speed it up at all?

Bump for the morning crowd

Can’t comment on the cineform studio, but….

I use cyberlink powerdirector and that can take a fairly long time to convert/produce videos.

Different output file types take different amounts of time in my experience. I can’t remember which file type was quickest. Have experimented with .wmv, .mov, .mp4 etc etc. Some take 2-3 hours, and one took about 6.

If you can, try different file types as your output….(and make a note of which one was quickest – unlike me 🙂 )

Ctrl Alt & Del to bring up task manager and see what IO is actually going on. Is it really doing something or pulling your chain. Power Director user here as well and yes it can take a while depending on the file and what PC spec you have.

Video processing is CPU intensive. What spec is your computer?

I don’t know Cineform, but if it helps in Windows Moviemaker when you first add a video to a project it takes 20/30 mins to convert a 3.5 GB file.

Do you have windows 7 because you can open and edit in movie maker.

Am really confused now, the raw footage in mp4 format plays fine using quicktime, I have used cineform to convert the files to .mov. I now want to stitch the files together as a movie, windows movie maker will not open either the original mp4 nor the converted .mov, am now converting the .mov to .avi but getting frustrated. What is the easy way of taking the original mp4 clips from the camera and turning them in to a single file that I can add music etc to????

I think i converted mine 2 wmv 2 edit it in win movie maker.then changed the file 2 mp2 4 best results once edited. If you type gopro settings into google theres a video on utube about file types etc

Just my opinion but I recently took the plunge and migrated from PC to Mac. The plus for Go-Pro users is that you can edit in mp4 and so dont need to convert.

Upload takes about an hour for each 2 hours of footage shot in r5.

Once its in the free iMovie app is a very good editor – I have used WMM as well and I think the results are better on the Mac.

Appreciate that Macs are expensive and so not an easy option, but if you get into editing and are looking to change PC in the future its worth considering.

http://vimeo.com/batbling

I use Windows Live Movie Maker to do just that. All I do is copy the files from the GoPro onto my hard disc, click the blue tab in the top left hand corner and select’new project’. A link appears in the project pane ‘click here to browse for videos and photos’. Click on this and an select the file you’ve copied from the GoPro – it then takes time to convert it, then appears in the project pane.
Then click on ‘add videos and photos’ to selected the next file to add – it will be added either at the beginning or end depending on where you put the cursor on the project pane – simples.

First up, you do not need a Mac to edit video. Any PC with a high enough spec will do it. Check the minimum system requirements of the software and then at least double it to get slow clunky running with HD images. 1 minute of HD video, dependent on frame rate and resolution, is equal to 3600 individual 3mb still images. Imagine trying to Photoshop 3600 pictures at once and you start to get an idea of what your PC is faced with.
It is always best to use software that can handle your footage in its native format. Converting the native format in the edit software is always time consuming, more so if the pc is not up to it. If you have to, convert the format, in one of the many converters, before you start to edit.
I am not familiar with Go Pro cameras and the last bundled Cineform product I tried was very poor. I am sure that their paid for products are far better. Of the consumer products, Pinnacle Studio is one of the easiest to use but has its haters. They offer a 30 day free trial as many of the other software providers do.
AVforums has a dedicated video editing forum and has always been a good source of info for me.

Thanks for all the help so far, last night I managed to get Cineform to convert the mp4 to avi, windows live movie maker recognised these files so tonight I can have a go at editting them together, will try the import to movie maker as described above too as that seems a much quicker way of doing it. For info PC is running Vista, 2GB ram, 320GB hard drive with 180GB free and 256MB graphics card

Vista=Poo

Vista, 2GB ram, 320GB hard drive with 180GB free and 256MB graphics card

That spec is at the bottom end of what works. Vista barely runs on 1GB of ram so 2GB is not much when it comes to HD editing. Your graphics card at 256mb will also struggle. It will work but as you have found, it takes a long time to do anything. The final render on a 30 minute HD project takes about an hour on my machine which has an i7 quad core processor, 1gb of graphics and 8gb of ram. Granted it can only use more than 3.5gb of ram unless it is running a 64bit program but it gives you an idea of how resource hungry HD editing is.

If on a PC download the free trial of Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD – it’s a free 30 trial with no hidden watermarks or anything. I made this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yObdquGB5QY with it in about an hour and I WILL be spending the c.£30 on it when the trial finishes. No need to convert files – dragged and dropped the MP4 into it from GoPro

Another option if you have a spare hard drive (or room on the current one) is to try Linux.

I installed Linux Mint and Kdenlive on a 2.2 Core2 Duo laptop and it edits 1080p or 720p 60pfs footage from the GoPro perfectly. Imports native files with no converting, preview and edit – all smoothly and pretty quick.

Only problems is it can’t preview ‘speed’ transition and rendering the output takes a while. Only solution to this is wait or get faster hardware.

What version of MovieMaker are you using? The one that came with my Vista laptop did not accept Mp4, but MovieMaker Live on Windows 7 works fine with it. I think you can run MovieMaker Live on Vista…

The results I had from converting mp4 to avi prior to importing were pretty rubbish, TBH.

I tried the Sony Vegas trial, but the movies it produced from mp4 were very poor quality, which was confusing.

Am using the latest version of Live Movie Maker from the microsoft website, will try this all again on the laptop we have as this has a better spec running windows 7 and being HD