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Editing Video At Home Rick Gasper
When I am asked what I use to edit video on my computer, I reply something like this: "Depends what the video is for" and the next question is "how much does it cost? There are three parts to video editing, capture, editing and output; I’ll cover each one in a second. Why do I like editing video, it is a lot of fun, I can be creative and finally, I can make a few bucks doing so. The really neat thing is using video to connect to another hobby. Since I belong to a paranormal research group, I use video editing to help my group. Capture To work with video, you need to get the video on your computer. This is the capture process. There are several ways to do this, first is ripping from a DVD or CD. This can be as easy as copying a file over or as difficult as using a program that does something that is legally questionable, The second way is to use a external capture device. These come in two flavors, USB or FIREWIRE (sometimes called 1394). I use both and fine the either one works well. The only thing you should keep in mind is that just about all computers come with USB ports, not as many come with FIREWIRE. If you use USB, make sure you are using the USB2.0 ports and not a 1.1 port. 2.0 ports are much faster than 1.1 ports (400 meg vs. 12 meg) the main difference is the speed. A lower USB port will not work well for transferring video. Also one thing to note, if you are capturing from a newer camcorder, and you computer has a FIREWIRE port, you don’t need to purchase a capture device (unless you plan to capture from another source). The camcorder will connect directly to the FIREWIRE port. A FIREWIRE port made be labeled 1394 or Ilink. There are internal capture devices that you can purchase as well, some include TV tuners so that you can watch TV on your computer. Editing The Edit process can be the most fun, and the most difficult part of the process. To edit the video you have just captured, you need to have some sort of editing software on your computer. There are a few different choices and the price ranges from nothing (included with your capture device or your computer) to $1000s. If you have Windows XP, you will have Microsoft Movie Maker. That software will allow you to edit video. IT is a FREE download if you have XP and it didn't get installed. Microsoft also has some free add ons to Movie Maker. Movie Maker is a great product to start with. I use Pinnacle’s product Studio 10.5 PLUS. I have a lot of money and invested in the software. Studio is a prosumer product. If I were to start over, I would look at a Professional product, such as Adobe Premier or Pinnacle’s Liquid. Studio is a good product to start with, but after a while you will find that if you want additional titles or effects, you have to add them on. This costs money. The pro products will have most of the effects included.
Output
You can output movies directly onto DVD, VCD (VideoCD) and SVCD (Super VideoCD) discs, if the required disc burning hardware is available on your system. If your system is equipped with a CD burner, you can create VCD or S-VCD discs on either CD-R or CD-RW media. Your VCD or SVCD discs can be played back on a on some DVD players, VCD or VCD player. The disks can also on a computer with a CD or DVD drive. The main difference is that that you will lose picture quality by moving from DVD to CD. You can also output to one of several different types of files. The QuickTime, AVI and MPEG formats are the most common. You could also use the real player format or Windows Media formats if you plan to stream the files on the web.
To wrap this up, You can edit video on your computer. It doesn’t take expensive software and you don’t need to be the next Quentin Tarantino. You can start small and work you way up to the big time. The key thing is to remember that you are to have fun.
Here are some links: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx
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