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OT: HD Digital Video Editing
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This one may be aimed at Veggie, but I'd be obliged for any info on
the subject. A mate of mine has just bought a high-spec High
Definition video camera and wants to edit the product without
compromising the HD quality. He's not into spending five grand on a
software suite for this, natch, and has been advised that Photoshop
Elements may be the way to go.
What he wants to end up with is a HD DVD that will play on his HD DVD
player into his monster HDTV in the best quality he can get - but only
steam trains, and only for personal use, so he doesn't want (or prolly
need) the overhead of a Pro suite.
Any opinions, oh FOAK?
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Get a fast PC with tons of RAM (1gig+) then go out and buy Vegas 7.
It's a pro app but if you're fairly geeky, you can be rough cutting in
a day or so. Vegas is terrific. In terms of bang for your quid, there's
probably nothing to touch it. It can do Baby's First Steps and it can
do broadcast level stuff if you want to. If you want to author DVD's
get the version that includes DVD Architect.
If you don't want to spend much money, you can get the more consumer
level Vegas Movie Studio, which is Vegas Lite - but it's still a
powerful app more than capable of outputting top quality material.
The whole Vegas range have particularly good audio features which are
pro quality
(for peanuts) and the video encoding is very good.
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OK, I come from the pro side of things so don't be surprised if I
suggest things at the top end of the budget. Firstly as mentioned before
you won't be able to do what your mate wants without a significant spend.
Secondly HDV at 25 frames per second will require quite a decent data
rate which means a fast hard drive and the media will consume storage
faster than you can imagine. I'd suggest a small RAID array [1] from
someone like Medea, 1Tb should mean it will last a while.
If you mate is considering a new computer I'd seriously suggest he
considers an Apple. I'm not going to get drawn into the old debates but
it's really easy to connect a Sony HDV camera to Final Cut Pro [2] and
everything stays in native format.
Whatever software he does choose, the single most important thing is to
make sure is that everything stays in it's native format. Playing video
down a video cable and recapturing will introduce significant
compression losses.
You will also need a decent video capture/playback board. I only have
experience of the Aja Kona 2 which is really excellent and will play
uncompressed HD with ease.
Then you'll need a decent monitor which can play 1920x1080 at 25fps.
This will not be cheap [3]
free free to email me, address in sig
Nick
[1] If he gets serious about HDV he will eventually want a decent
storage device and it much easier to start with one than try to migrate
later.
[2]FCP despite the name isn't really a pro tool compared to similar
offerings from Avid but it is very good value for money.
[3] He'll have to make do with a flat panel device as broadcast quality
HD monitor will blow the budget wide open all by itself.
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1. Photoshop is not a video editing platform
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Ah. Slip of the tongue, so to type. I may well have meant Adobe
Elements.
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2. You will generally need a separate DVD authoring program to create
DVDs
3. I'm not sure you can buy HD DVD burners yet, so he'll only be able
to create SD DVDs. He should be able to create DivX movies in HD, but
both the DivX-compatible DVD players I've had, including one that does
HDMI output, won't handle DivX in HD resolution
4. iMovie and iDVD would probably do the trick for him in SD, if he
fancies splashing out on a Mac mini. Failing that, Adobe Premiere
Elements is OK
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