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Last update : 14/june/2009

Nederlands Home Boys Video CD-I Photos Genealogy

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Video & Editing

Today 2008

Nowadyas I have a Sony HDR-FX7 HDV camera. Unfortunately not all the informatioen beneath is up to date, but it still helps

Magix

The software people of Magix are working also hard on their Magix Video. It is almost magic! Nowadays we have version 15 of the package with a lot of new features in it. According the German magazine Video-Aktiv it's onw of the best video editing software in his class.
On the site of Magix you can read the specifactions of this beautifull software package! I think also that it is a best value software package for editing your own videos.

On "Besten Listen" from VideoAktiv Digital(new testmethod) this prodcut is in the top three of the other products in his price range. The ranking is between Adobe Elements and Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate).

 

Making videos

One of my hobbies is making videos. The past last years I make video of all our vacations, and mostly I use my videocamera. On some trips I shoot more then 6 hours of video. That's far too much for a nice video, so I edit the tape and make a video of about 30 - 45 minutes. Sometimes I split the tape into two parts if I have more to show. I tape all my videos on S-VHS-C tape, which has a pretty good quality.

The past

A few years ago I did the editing with a VHS-recorder. First I look at the raw-material and wrote the scenes down on paper. Then I select the nice scenes and order them. When I had all the scenes in the correct order I connect my Camcorder to the VHS-recorder and with the Record/Still buton I make my video. When all the scenes where on the tape I mixed music with the original sound and add some comment to it. This method was very time consuming and when I made a mistake I had to restart. Two years ago I bought a S-VHS recorder. From that time on the final quality was better. The recorder had also an insert option, so when a scene was not so good you can replace it with an other scene. In that time I experienced also with Synchro-Edit, two recorders attached with a synchro-cable. This was much easier, the recorder send namely signals to the player when to start or stop. Synchro-Edit works good when you have two same video-recorders. You have still much to do, so .....

Some years ago I bought a Video-Mouse. VideoMouse It doesn't look like a normal PC-mouse. It has serval keys on it and a Jog and Shuttle wheel. With the keys You can control an attached video-player and recorder. It's also connected to a PC, via a serial-com port. Now I make my editing list directly on my PC. I registrate all the different scenes by start- and stop-framenummer, I enter some comment about the scene and my PC calculates the duration of the scene. After I have review all the material and saved it, I make a copy of it and delete the not wanted scenes. I put the scenes in the order I want and then I start the programm to assemble my video-movie. The above described method works fine if You a have video tape with time code on it. It works with VITC-timecode, Rapic-timecode, from GSE, and RCTC-timecode from Sony. The Video-mouse I use is made by GSE a German Company. You can buy the same Video-mouse from Miro, Rowi, Blaupunkt and some other companies.

The present

It's there!! I have my new PC, a Pentium II, 266 MHz with 64MB SDRAM. An Ultra Wide SCSI-disk with Adaptec controller for video-editing. I am now looking for the AV-Master card. Almost I bought one, but I had troubles with the store. I have it!! I got my AV-Master video-card from Dazzle Europe.
Since a few weeks I have the FAST-AVMaster video editing card. It came with Media Studio Pro from Ulead. I have made my first small video on my PC. The result was good but it cost me a lot of time and there is more to go!!

My Equipment

Room

On the picture on the left you see my video- and computerroom. At the left you see my two Panasonic S-VHS videorecorders, namely a NV-FS200 and a NV-HS1000. On both videorecorders I have attach a Philips monitor (CM8833 and CM8802). I use the videorecorders for editing my videomovies. The camcorder I have is a Philips S-VHS-C camcorder, type VKR9300.
To edit my videos I did use the above mentioned Video-mouse from GSE in combination with my new Pentium II 266Mhz.

Genlock

In December 1996 I bought a genlock. This is a device which is connected to a videoplayer and the VGA-output of a PC. The genlock has an overlay function, so with my PC I can make titles and add them to the video-image. The genlock I use is from Vine Micros. I must say that the quality is good (S-VHS). On the picture you see the Genlock on the top of the monitor.
Now a days I use also the AV-Master card from Fast. I have just made my first video with it and I must say the quality is good. The picture of my computerroom is captured from my videorecorder, the quality is not so good.

Non-linear Editing (NLE)

Non-linear editing do you with use of a computer. You capture the video from your video-player on a harddisk with a video-capture card. After that you use a Video-software editing package to make transistions, add audio and edit the scenes so that you can make a nice video-movie. After you did that you can write the video back to a tape.

So you need four things, namely :

  • A computer
  • A big harddisk
  • A video capture card
  • And, of course, a lot of patience

I will describe my situation. On the net there are many discussion groups about NLE. There are many problems with the hardware and software if you have time to read it all, but in my case, and many others, all work fine.
The first thing was to find the right Video-Capture Card. A few years ago I saw some products from Fast and the test-results of the Fast AV-Master card where good. So I decided to buy one, but first I had to buy a new Computer. The manufacturers of most cards have a compatibility list of hardware. So I visit there site and with other information of the newsgroups I decided to buy an Intel Pentium II 266Mhz system, with ASUS P2L97 ATX motherboard and 64Mb SDRAM on board. I also bought an Adaptec 2940UW-SCSI controller with an AV UW-SCSI-disk of 4.2Gb only for my video-editing stuff. (read and write rate is more then 9Mb/sec (Fast Benchmark)). Last year I also bought a Quantum Atlas IV U2W-drive of 18GB. Now i have plenty of space for a big movie. I can store more then one hour on my AV-drives. As system disk I have a 5.2 Gb Ultra-ATA disk. As video-card I have a Matrox Millenium II 4Mb AGP card. The whole system is running under Windows 95 Release 4.00.95 B (OSR 2.x) and FAT32
As video-capture card I bought the Fast AV-Master 98. With this capture card I got also the editing software from Ulead, namely a full version of Media Studio Pro 5.1. Also Magic Music Maker and Media Mania was included.
From Fast came the PowerPlay software and Fast-Capture software.

Installing the capture card was easy and installing the software also. First you must install Ulead Media Studio Pro 5.0 and updates of the programm. After that you nust install the AV-Master-drivers, AV-Master Software and the PowerPlay software.
When all is installed, configured and connected you can starting capturing from a video-tape. I save the video-scenes I captured on my video harddisk. In have a compression of 1:6, so this is S-VHS quality or better. With this compression I have room for 80 minutes video on my harddisks. I capture the video with the Fast-Cap program from Fast. Usually I capture 10-12 minutes video. When I am ready with capturing I start the Video-editor from Media Studio Pro 5.2. Here I start with a blank header of about 10 seconds. Then I put the scenes in the right order. Parts I don't need, I cut off. I make some transistion if necessary and mix the original sound with background music and comment. When I have finish a scene I do a preview, now the transistion are calculated. The task of PowerPlay is to read the video-data straight from the original clip and read the transistion from temporary files. During the whole editing session all information about transistion is saved, so I don't need to calculated the transistion every time. When the project is finish I play the edited video from the timeline and record it on a S-VHS tape. So I do not have to make an new avi-file with the final result.

In my case I have less problems, but I think when you do other stuff on you computer, such as games, you might have troubles! So my advice is : don't play games on your video-editing computer!!

New Software

There is new software avialable for the AV-Master. Goto my AV-Master driverfolder, choose your version and download all files from the folder. Choose AV-Master and select the appropriate 2.5 software. The new AV-Master version 2.5 (build 0019, feb. 2000) is for Windows 98 or Windows NT4.0. Windows 95 users must still use version 2.2.
There is also a new version of Ulead Media Studio Pro available. You can get version 6.0 from the Ulead site.

Attention MSP 5.2 users : When you run MSP 5.2 you will need the updated UVAVI.VIO file. This is also on the ULEAD-site.

Some sites are :

Please, let me know if a link gives an error!

GSE/RovoTech

Fast & Dazzle

Magix Software

Desktop Video Software

Desktop Video Hardware

  • Homepage from COMO (Computer & Motion)- Video-editing products for PC.
  • Videonics - Video Editing Resource Page. Articles for beginning and advanced videographer including definition of editing, how-to articles, video glossary, and amusing quotes about television and film. Also information about Videonics products.
  • Vine Micros Home Page- provides information about genlocks.
  • GTH Electronics Home Page - makers of the "ACE" Advanced Colour Enhancer, a very flexible video maker's tool.

Video clubs

Miro/Pinnacle Systems

  • Pinnacle Systems - provides information about Miro DC20, DC30, DV300, Video mouse and actual drivers.
  • Pinnacle Systems - provides information about Miro DC20, DC30, DV300, Video mouse and actual drivers.

Magazines

Video References

Desktop Video References

Digital Video

Information and Shopping

Mail icon Fred Baltus (fred.baltus@bigfoot.com)
Copyright 2003 Baltus Media