O/T Editing movies

angelis would seem to be your man

 

I'd like to help, but I'm still trying to figure ouit compression and I don't know anything about adobe Premier.

Is there a compression option in the software?

 

The format your camcorder uses is uncompressed. Roughly speaking, films on DVDs are in mpeg-2 format, which is a lossy compression algorithm. It is the compression that means you can fit so much on a DVD. The compression is basically about determining the differences between frames - your camcorder stores each frame in full which is why it produces so much data.

Commercial DVDs are actually 8Gb, because they are dual layer. Thus you have to halve the quality to get as much on a 4.7Gb disk as you can on a commercial DVD. Dual layer DVD writers are now available but they are more expensive, as is the media. With video compression you can basically choose how 'lossy' you want it to be - either by resolution or by the amount of compression applied.

Unfortunately, there is no escaping the fact that you have to get all 33Gb of the footage onto your hard disk at some point (you can capture it in segments of course). However, when Premiere produces the DVD it will compress the data for you thus producing a smaller format - that is the bit you are missing I think.

You need lots of hard disk space for video editing !

Ric.

 

I bought one of them sony hand held disk recorders, you know the ones that you can put in the dvd machine. Not as easy as they make out becourse you have to finalize the recording on to the disk before it can be put in a dvd player,and its not easy. I took it to Drivers Run Brunters and got lots of hot shots and when i got home i erased the bloody thing while trying to finalize the thing Will try again tomorrow at Brunters. Bloody machines.

 

£85 quid pc world, disks now 10 for £25

 

Generically, as Ric mentions you have to have enough disk space to cover your clips. The software you use will then compress it for you when it transfers it to disk (which will take a while).

Don't worry too much about commercial movies running dual layer disks - you can get a fair amount of high quality footage on a single layer disk.

The movie companies fill the duals up with 12 different sound tracks, alternate endings and all manner of extras that people rarely watch. The films themselves rarely go over the single layer capacity, unless they're particularly long (which home movies rarely are).

For some good advice with editing film, and at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, buy a Mac.

They come as standard with some of the best video editing software on the market, will do the job a lot faster than a PC and will basically save you enough in time, headaches and stress that the machine pays for itself very quickly. A new one will also have plenty of disk space!

I struggled for weeks trying to get a PC to do this stuff a while ago (around 4-5yrs now). Ended up wandering into the MacExpo in Islington as I'd heard these machines were built for this sort of stuff.

Took my camcorder and a tape up there, gave it to the guy doing video demos and in 10mins he'd edited it and put the resuts to disk. Easy. 10 more minutes and you get a DVD with menus and all manner of fancy stuff.

I bought a Powerbook at the show and 15mins after getting it home, was busy doing the same thing myself.

A mate of mine was going to follow the same route but got a good deal on a very nice Toshiba laptop. He still can't edit video on it that easily (largely because he gave up after suffering hassles at every turn).

 

No probs using a PC to do this stuff here A current PC with up to date software should have no probs.

Lots of RAM and HDD space help if you want to do this stuff. Having dual fast HHDs in RAID-0 format also speeds things up.

I'm using a 1 year old Alienware 3.2Ghz Intel PC with 1Gb RAM and 320Gb HDD, RAID-0.

I just use the software that came with my little Canon Ixus700 camera, and the PC iteself. Nothing more needed unless you are a pro film editor.

Jas

 

Macs are for people like Murph and Chaa....who also need power steering to be able to drive their cars

 

The key is to have a look through your footage and mark your in/out points then capture only the portion you need. Normally i get about ten minutes of usable footage from an hours' worth of tape.

Regarding whether to use a Mac or PC, it is personal choice. I use a ibook (Mac) for surfing, itunes etc.

However all my editing is done on a PC runing Adobe Premier Pro, Encore, After Effects and Photoshop. This PC is about 3 years old and does the job perfectly.

 

What you meant to say is, people who understand that having the best for the job means not forgoing style or performance for the sake of a few pennies

PS The steering in the 355 gives me a break from the workout in the 365