Please point me to some references on video editing

[palouse]

I am setting up a new system for the home. I've read nearly every AnandTech forums self-help, evaluation, and "vs" article available over the last 4-5 months. How to Overclock, Int vs AMD, 754 vs 939, x800 vs 6800, HL RAM vs Fast RAM, gaming vs multitasking, etc., etc. I am down to the last piece, and I just don't want to go into search mode again. I need to stop lurking, and start assembling.

The last piece for me is video editing. I want to move 20-30 hours of digital and analog home movies from tape to file. I want to move them for preservation, ease of viewing, and make it easier to create copies to share with the rest of the family. I want to 'clean up' the transitions, remove Aunt Mary's drunken diatribe from the wedding video, and document general sequences on each disc. I assume that I will want to put them into DVD format. (Maybe not.) The original cameras will be the playback systems for the original tapes. If this works well, and without excessive consumption of my limited free-time, other familiy member may want to convert home movies, maybe another 120+ hours worth. To me, this is light, or occasional-use video processing.

I need articles on what equipment and software is needed to do it. And how to do it. I assume that I will need a DVD writer, but I don't know about the different types of writers. Will VIVO will be a logical addition to whatever video card I end up purchasing for this system. Do I want/need a higher quality play-back system for the original tapes. Those types of questions.

Thank you for your time.

 

[gsellis]

There are a couple of fair resources on the web. VideoHelp has some guides and conversion information. The Videoguys have some very good references in the second paragraph on their main page. The Videoguys sell Prosumer stuff, but they do have good materials including hardware builds, do's and don'ts. They also have some great deals on higher-end video editing stuff.

Some key things to note. The best format for capture and editing is DV (AVI), which runs at 13GB/hr of video. So, 10 MiniDV tapes will eat 130GB of storage. 30 hours is 420GB. VHS converted to DV is the same size unless you convert it to MPEG-2 using an encoder card. Editing MPEG-2 can be problematic though. Studio 9 will edit it ok. But some of the higher end editors that now support HDV do a better job, but $$$. In some cases (non-editing), VHS to DVD Recorders are great. If one were to get one with a Firewire port, it will also burn DVDs from Mini-DV/D8 sources.

 

[palouse]

Thank you for the references, and for breaking the ice on what to look for. Just what I needed. :beer: