Video Problem with Inspiron 8500

Hi,
I have a Dell Inspiron 8500, P4M 2.50 GHz, 512 MB RAM, on which I would like to be able to edit my Mini DV (digital video) footage, from a Sony TRV-33 camera.

Unfortunately, both the Sony software, and Win XP (Home Edition)'s Movie Maker 1.1.2427.1 lock up when I try to do anything other than capturing the video (i.e., I can capture the video).

Also, I find that 3 mins. of captured video is approximately 4 GIGABYTES(!) in length, which I'm sure must be representative of something being awry here.

I have considered updating the Movie Maker software, but this seems to require updating to Service Pack 2, which completely locked-up my laptop when I did this (luckily, I still had a warrantee at that point, and I also encountered one of the new Dell reps., in India, who was the most helpful, polite, and knowledgable tech. person whom I've ever dealt with - he showed me how to get into the laptop so that I could uninstall SP2).

So, I'm in a bit of a quandry about how I can get the machine working to edit digital video. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tottington1

 

Hi Heart,
Thanks for the reply.

It's good to know that I can mention 2 topics in one thread because in other forums concerning other interests I have people get heavily criticized for mentioning more than one topic in one thread.

Also, the video issue isn't crucial to my day-to-day functioning, but I would like it be addressed. I don't think that it has anything to do with the other problem (Inspiron locking up when downloading SP2), but you never know.

Thanks for the encouragement, though.

 

re: 4 gbs/3 mins... check the settings in movie maker to see if you can capture at a lower res, format, or quality. at a low quality setting, video should run about 10 megs per minute. however, you may be looking at larger file sizes either by default from the vid software or a proprietary format...i've only used premiere, maybe you should consider getting a copy to play with, it's very robust

re: sp2 and 8500... have you checked for any white papers outlining problems? you should be able to run sp2 without any probs unless there is a known hardware conflict or something... i would hit up dell's support site and look for a wp on the subject

 

Hi Heart and Drumfu,
Thanks for the replies.

Drumfu - will try your suggestions.

Tottington1