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Desktop Hollywood

So you want to be a big-time movie director? Computer editing advances create auteurs from home video buffs

Steve Morgenstern
From the Print Edition:
The Best Places to Gamble, Sep/Oct 02

Finally, there's the option to burn your movies onto DVD disks. This is the cutting edge of home-video editing, and sure to knock the socks off your less technologically advanced friends and neighbors. The major PC manufacturers, notably Dell and Gateway, offer DVD-
burning drives as an option on their build-to-order systems for about $400, and Macintosh buyers pay even less to step up to a system equipwith its DVD-burning SuperDrive versus a standard CD burner.

What You Need: Software

For getting your feet wet with video editing, you can use the software that comes with your computer.

Microsoft's Movie Maker is included with the Windows XP operating system. It does a nice job of transferring video from your digital camcorder into the computer, even creating separate files for individual scenes automatically. You can then drag a scene into a sequence, trim the beginning and end points, add a musical soundtrack if you like, and preview the result on-screen. You don't get precise control over the way the video and the audio interact, but it's fine for the basics, and a good introduction to video-editing concepts. One big gap: you can't create text titles within the program. But my major beef is that, while you can save your work in a wide variety of computer file formats, you can't send it back to the camcorder to tape it. This is a major flaw, and I can't for the life of me understand why Microsoft hasn't fixed it.

On the Macintosh, Apple provides its iMovie 2 software, which is far more capable than its Windows counterpart. You get simple editing controls, lots of nice between-scene transitions, animated titles and a variety of video special effects. Audio editing is still a bit tricky, and learning how to use the more advanced features is a chore due to the poorly organized product information provided. Still, with a little trial and error, you can create sophisticated video projects with iMovie, and it works hand in glove with the superb iDVD program to churn out slick DVD disks on a SuperDrive. What's more, both programs are provided free with your system, and you can't beat that.

Windows users shouldn't despair, though -- for less than $100 you'll find several excellent consumer video editing programs. One favorite is VideoWave 5 Power Edition from Roxio, which lets you create beautiful text titles, and sophisticated Hollywood-style transitions between scenes, and even allows you to speed up or slow down a sequence, all with surprising ease. If you plan to save your movies to DVD, VideoWave is especially appealing -- the new version boasts a powerful system for creating good-looking DVD menus and burning disks that will play on most home DVD players.

Another solid choice is VideoStudio 6 from Ulead, which provides a step-by-step approach to video editing, with an easy visual framework for structuring your movie and very precise controls for tweaking the video and audio components. You can pull off some fairly funky effects with the advanced tools, such as superimposing a figure on a separately shot background, but my primary reason for recommending VideoStudio is the easy-to-understand system for pulling off editing basics with a splash of style.

One more mid-range choice worth considering is Studio version 7 from Pinnacle Systems, especially if you're running a less than firebreathing Windows machine. Studio lets you store and work with video in a compact preview format, taking up much less disk space, then recapture full-resolution footage of only the sections you use in the final film. You also get a well-designed title creation utility and a clever music creation tool that builds custom soundtracks, in the style you choose, timed to exactly match your project's needs.

Finally, if you're getting serious about this stuff and want the kind of total control the pros demand, consider Adobe Premiere, available for both Windows and the Macintosh for about $550. Premiere is admittedly more difficult to learn than the mid-range programs, but you'll never outgrow its capabilities. Interestingly, one of the key features that differentiate a midrange video-editing program from the high-end choices is audio-editing sophistication, an area where Premiere shines. For instance, say I lay a music track under a party scene, but want to drop the music volume briefly so I can hear the toast being made. With the other programs mentioned, this would be a significant hurdle -- with Premiere I just click on the audio track, pull down to adjust the volume, then pick a spot after the toast is completed and pull it back up. Premiere is also an exceptional tool for handling major projects, with lots of individual video and audio clips; between the "bin" system for stowing component parts and a comprehensive search capability, I can quickly find one clip in a thousand.

That should get you well on your way to video editing success. The key point to remember when jumping in is that the fundamental step -- cutting clips out of raw video footage and putting them in order -- is very easy no matter which setup you choose. Let's face it, whatever you can do to keep the good stuff and eliminate the rest is going to be one huge improvement.

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