fileinfo.com is turning out to be a wonderful resource. A month or so ago I bought a couple of Aiptek isdv2.4 video cameras – very low end little plastic cameras. The price was right (about $70 each) plus I wanted to see how well they would work or not work with the older eMacs and iMovie 6 my students use.

They were kept on the back shelf until this past week when the rush of project deadlines hit and I discovered that they shoot to yet another file format I hadn’t run into (not that I’m a file format guru) – .asf or Advanced System Format File, which is described as

a proprietary video and audio container format; developed by Microsoft primarily for streaming media; contains audio and video data and optionally metadata, such as title, author, and copyright bibliographic data.

fileinfo.com had a link to a free download of a converter called iSkysoft Video Converter, so I was able to convert to mp4, which imports right into iMovie. If these cameras become part of the workflow for my program rather than an experiment, I’ll pay for copies for a couple of computers…right now I’m getting by on the free version which leaves a watermark over the video.

Always following the motto of one of my literary heros, Doug Adams: DON’T PANIC.

Advertisement