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PC: Lights, computer, action!
By CHRISTOPHER AVE, Times Staff Writer
Much farther down the list, but still important: How will we record our baby's big moments? How will we chronicle his birth, his first word, his initial steps? A still camera? Certainly. But we also want to record and preserve video of our son. In anticipation of receiving lots of videos of our new arrival, my father and stepmother had given us a digital camcorder. We realized it was, theoretically at least, possible to transfer and edit our baby video on a computer. With the recent convergence of faster processors, larger hard drives, cheaper DVD burners and several good software products, our realization came at the right time. Digital video, it seems, has arrived for the masses. I am no computer expert. Although I record and edit music on my home PC, I am no better than average on a computer. That seemed to make me the perfect guinea pig for a Tech Times review.
The process, I soon learned, is anything but simple. High hopesThe first thing I needed to do was get video from my camcorder into the computer. The best way, the experts agree, is via a FireWire card, formally known as an IEEE 1394 adapter card. FireWire transfers lots of information quickly, which is good for digital video. I purchased the cheapest card I could find, a D-Link brand that cost about $30. Installation was easy. It involved turning off and unplugging the computer, opening its case (a scary move to some users but not as dangerous as it seems) and plugging the card into a PCI slot. Then all I needed to do was screw on the faceplate, close the case and restart the computer. My PC, which has a 1-gigahertz Pentium III processor running Windows 98 Second Edition, recognized the new card and installed the driver. Full of confidence, I decided to install one of the more powerful pieces of software I tested, Ulead's VideoStudio 6, and immediately begin working on video my wife shot of me running the Gasparilla 15K race. That's when the trouble started. After I installed the software, I was not able to boot up my computer. Several attempts followed, and I had to shut off the power manually a couple of times before I was able to get the machine going again. It was a portent of things to come. ProblemsIn all the video software I tested, the first step is "capturing" the video by hooking your camcorder to the FireWire card. Making sure the camcorder was hooked up and set in "player" mode, I launched the software.
I chose an option that seemed to let the computer decide -- a good move, for in no time I was "capturing" about 20 minutes of video from the race. Seeing your video on the computer screen for the first time is thrilling. But just as I was learning to use the many features of VideoStudio 6, I found I could not open the software without getting an error message. Frustrated, I decided to uninstall the program and move to a competing piece of software, Pinnacle Studio version 7. That's when I realized I was in deeper trouble than I knew. As soon as Pinnacle was installed, the program froze my computer. We decided I should conduct the tests on Tech Times' more powerful testing PC, equipped with Windows XP and a Pentium 4 processor running at 1.3GHz. While my PC technically met the minimum requirements for each piece of software, something in my setup was not allowing me to operate the software correctly. Using a newer system, we hoped, would give me an experience closer to one that most new computer buyers would have. Editing and burningOnce I fired up the newer machine, I decided that I should start with software aimed at beginners like me. That's when the process began making sense. Using Ulead's DVD Movie Factory, Pinnacle Express and MGI Cinematic, I captured video, did some basic editing and produced a simple home movie ready to burn onto a DVD. After the video was copied from camcorder to computer, each software program offered the ability to detect changes in the video and automatically divide it into scenes. That didn't always work, even though my raw footage contained separate segments -- a prerace interview, the start, finish and aftermath. But you can split the video into scenes yourself. Each scene is represented on the computer as a single image, and you drag around the images to get the scenes in the correct order. Once I divided the scenes, however, the shortcomings of the cheaper, beginner-oriented software began to emerge. Although I could do some editing within each scene, I couldn't do everything I wanted to. Transitions between scenes were limited. And I could add music, but I couldn't edit it as precisely as I wanted. Those limitations disappeared when I turned to the more robust programs in the test: MGI VideoWave version 5.0 and the two programs I started with, Pinnacle Studio version 7 and Ulead VideoStudio 6. Here, editing became very precise. Numerous transitions between scenes became possible, and video could be slowed, quickened, even distorted. I could add and edit music and other sound. I was able to produce a video of the race, complete with a title screen, transitions between scenes and music. Although I chose to use music from a CD, all the big programs offer canned music that can add a lot to a finished video project. If I had put more time into it, my video could have been much fancier. I could have, for instance, slowed down the moment when I crossed the finish line to a frame-by-frame finish like one of those TV profiles of an Olympic gold medalist. I could have separated the scenes with title pages or dubbed narration over the action. Burning the video onto a DVD was a two-step process, a bit more complex than burning music to a CD. First, I converted the video to an MPEG 2 format (a digital video format used on DVDs), a metamorphosis that takes a while even with a fast machine. Then I copied the finished video onto a DVD, which took even more time -- nearly an hour in one case -- to burn a 10-minute video. I suspect a faster processor would cut the time considerably. The tested DVD burner, a Pioneer DVR-A03, was easy to install and performed well, if slowly. It is widely available for between $400 and $500. It isn't necessary to burn your edited video onto a DVD. If you have a CD burner, most software packages allow you to burn video onto a regular CD-R disc to create a video CD, or VCD. But VCDs hold only a bit more than an hour of video, compared with two hours or more for DVD. And DVDs offer higher video quality. Plus, you can view your finished DVD on a DVD player hooked up to your TV while video CDs typically will work only on your computer. If you have neither kind of burner, you can record your video back onto a digital video tape using your digital camcorder. It won't last as long as a disk, but the quality will be far better than old-fashioned 8mm tape. A note of warning: Some of the tested software products, like the otherwise excellent Pinnacle Studio version 7, don't have DVD burning capability. So if you know you want to burn your finished video projects onto DVDs, it pays to make sure the software you buy can do it. Final sceneSo, after many hours of sometimes frustrating labor, I have an edited digital record of my turtlesque performance running my first 15K. And, more important, I have a better idea of what digital video editing is all about. Here are some lessons my labors taught me: -- When it comes to digital video, the first piece of advice is: Be patient. Learning even the most basic program takes time, particularly if your usual computer use is limited to sending e-mail and surfing the Internet. Plan on reading all the documentation and working through some practice drills before you start on your own video. (Advice I learned the hard way.) -- If you are not comfortable working with complex programs, or you don't have a number of weeks on your schedule with nothing better to do than to learn how, don't start out with the top-of-the-line software. Use one of the excellent beginner packages. If it works well for you, you can upgrade to a more powerful product. -- If you have an older computer, consider upgrading before investing in a digital camcorder and editing software. Recording and manipulating video takes a lot of horsepower. My experience shows that you should use the most powerful processor you can afford. It also helps to have a large, fast hard drive, preferably an Ultra DMA running at 7200 RPM, and plenty of memory. The bottom line? Digital video isn't easy, despite what the software companies' marketing departments proclaim. But with patience, some time and a fairly new computer, creating DVDs is possible and, once you get past the frustrations, fun, even for an average user like me. -- Christopher Ave is assistant city editor in the Times' Clearwater office. He can be reached at ave@sptimes.com. What format?These are the digital video file formats available, along with what they're used for:
Source: Ulead Systems Inc.
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From Tech Times
From the AP |
When my wife and I learned that we were to have our first baby, we started fretting over many questions: Where will the baby sleep? What will we do about day care?
