Desktop Video: A Starter's Guide to Video Editing

The home video; for years now it has been a staple of North American households due to the affordability of consumer level camcorders. Home videos may be attractively priced, but they almost completely lack editing capability. I'm sure everyone has had to watch a home video that just seemed to go on forever because it practically did. The traditional analog methods of video editing are usually beyond the financial reach of the majority of home users, so the only method available was the archaic VCR to VCR dubbing platform. Not only is this method difficult and time consuming, it also tends to produce messy results on consumer level VCRs. Clean cuts, nice transitions and attractive titles were just not available to the average home user.

Computers eventually started to ease the video editing process, but this was limited by cost to the high-end professional market. The beauty of these expensive editing computers was that you could edit a video just like a document with cutting and pasting. This was called non-linear editing, as opposed to linear editing, in which a video had to be edited in sequence. These new computers were also capable of adding digital effects, smooth transitions and multiple layers of audio.

Finally the trickle-down effect has reached the home computing market. Home computers powerful enough to handle the demands of decent quality video editing! The lower costs of CPUs, RAM, and especially hard drives, have made the dream of good quality video on the home PC a reality.

Skip To Page • 1 Introduction 2 How Does it Work? 3 What Do You Need? 4 Capture Cards and Software 5 Getting Started 6 Professional vs. Consumer 7 Conclusion

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