I do agree that in computers, you basically get what you pay for. However, there are time you have to sacrifice something to avoid having a second mortgage on the house or use your kid's college fund. I am starting videography and I did not want to spend an arm and a leg to do it. It is not my job to produce video, but I do want to put titles and background music. This is what I have so far:
(For those who do not live in the USA, a buck = 1 USD).
1. Dual Celeron machine 433 with 128 MB RAM running Windows 2K professional with 18 gigs of drive space Cost: Hardware about 1,000 at the time I purchased it, probably you could do it in about 700 bucks. I built the machine myself. I personally recommend a dual CPU machine if you are serious about it. You might have a fast 1 CPU chip. But while rendering movies, the machine will become CPU bound to your video editing software, which means in plain english, that your computer will become slugish. Dual CPU's gives you better response computer while doing a CPU bound process. However, dual CPU systems only works on Linux, NT or 2K.
2. JVC Camcorder: about 700.00
3. Firewire Card with Ulead lite. 40 bucks.
That's about 1500. It is not cheap, but it is not extremely expensive either.
So far? Results have been ok. But...
Rendering the final product is a slow process. Mostly because of lack of memory. 128 megs is tight to run W2K by itself, putting it to render movies, you get a machine is almost trashing. Therefore, you might want to consider going all the way to 256 Megabytes.
(add about 300 bucks) Even though, I am able to create simple pictures with background music.
The JVC Camcorder supports dubbing out of the firewire which makes it convenient to record back to the camcorder. I have not personally done that because my current hard drives are ATA33 and it might drop frames while going in and out. What everybody recommends is to have a SCSI controller with SCSI drives. This might cost you about 500 bucks depending on the controller and drive. My motherboard supports ATA66 drives, and probably that's what I'm going to do purchase to increase this machine's hard drive capacity. That will increase the whole thing to about 200 more (300 less than SCSI).
The ULead Lite software that came with the firewire card is adequate for simple editing. You can put in your birthday movies things like narration, the background music, titles and transitions. However, more advanced features like filtering are not available. You might get away with it by using real filters, but you loose the "what if" capabilities and might require a bit of planning before shooting your auntie on your cousin's friend wedding.
As Peter suggests, if you are getting serious, get a good system like Canopus or Pinnacle and get Adobe, but keep in mind that we are talking about 650 bucks just for the software, and a lot more for the hardware. But, before you even consider buying more video hardware, take a good look at your system and identify potential areas of trouble. Most likely you will have to buy more RAM and fast drives (if you have 64Megs of RAM and two 2 Gig hard drives forget it, it will not work right). You might want to rearrange your drives, change your swap space out of the way, get a RAID system if you are really getting into it. If the basic computer system is not sound for video, no matter what video editing card and software you get, it will not work as intended.
But, if you are just "playing" (like me), probably something more basic might fill the bill. I have been able to get stuff edited and titled with music with my current set up. I know that it is not going to a Cinemaplex and will be looked with my mom's heart, so why spend the money, I could use it for something else.
Another suggestion, if you want to get your hands dirty and save some dough in the process, you might want to consider a Linux editing system using Broadcast 2000. (http://www.heroinewarrior.com) The software is free, just make sure you get hardware that is compatible with Linux. The drawback? Well, it is Linux, you get a powerful stable platform with a lot of quirks to learn and get used to (Being a UNIX System Admin for a couple of years has helped me :) ).
Video Editing Software
in Video
Posted
I do agree that in computers, you basically get what you pay for. However, there are time you have to sacrifice something to avoid having a second mortgage on the house or use your kid's college fund. I am starting videography and I did not want to spend an arm and a leg to do it. It is not my job to produce video, but I do want to put titles and background music. This is what I have so far:
(For those who do not live in the USA, a buck = 1 USD).
1. Dual Celeron machine 433 with 128 MB RAM running Windows 2K professional with 18 gigs of drive space Cost: Hardware about 1,000 at the time I purchased it, probably you could do it in about 700 bucks. I built the machine myself. I personally recommend a dual CPU machine if you are serious about it. You might have a fast 1 CPU chip. But while rendering movies, the machine will become CPU bound to your video editing software, which means in plain english, that your computer will become slugish. Dual CPU's gives you better response computer while doing a CPU bound process. However, dual CPU systems only works on Linux, NT or 2K.
2. JVC Camcorder: about 700.00
3. Firewire Card with Ulead lite. 40 bucks.
That's about 1500. It is not cheap, but it is not extremely expensive either.
So far? Results have been ok. But...
Rendering the final product is a slow process. Mostly because of lack of memory. 128 megs is tight to run W2K by itself, putting it to render movies, you get a machine is almost trashing. Therefore, you might want to consider going all the way to 256 Megabytes.
(add about 300 bucks) Even though, I am able to create simple pictures with background music.
The JVC Camcorder supports dubbing out of the firewire which makes it convenient to record back to the camcorder. I have not personally done that because my current hard drives are ATA33 and it might drop frames while going in and out. What everybody recommends is to have a SCSI controller with SCSI drives. This might cost you about 500 bucks depending on the controller and drive. My motherboard supports ATA66 drives, and probably that's what I'm going to do purchase to increase this machine's hard drive capacity. That will increase the whole thing to about 200 more (300 less than SCSI).
The ULead Lite software that came with the firewire card is adequate for simple editing. You can put in your birthday movies things like narration, the background music, titles and transitions. However, more advanced features like filtering are not available. You might get away with it by using real filters, but you loose the "what if" capabilities and might require a bit of planning before shooting your auntie on your cousin's friend wedding.
As Peter suggests, if you are getting serious, get a good system like Canopus or Pinnacle and get Adobe, but keep in mind that we are talking about 650 bucks just for the software, and a lot more for the hardware. But, before you even consider buying more video hardware, take a good look at your system and identify potential areas of trouble. Most likely you will have to buy more RAM and fast drives (if you have 64Megs of RAM and two 2 Gig hard drives forget it, it will not work right). You might want to rearrange your drives, change your swap space out of the way, get a RAID system if you are really getting into it. If the basic computer system is not sound for video, no matter what video editing card and software you get, it will not work as intended.
But, if you are just "playing" (like me), probably something more basic might fill the bill. I have been able to get stuff edited and titled with music with my current set up. I know that it is not going to a Cinemaplex and will be looked with my mom's heart, so why spend the money, I could use it for something else.
Another suggestion, if you want to get your hands dirty and save some dough in the process, you might want to consider a Linux editing system using Broadcast 2000. (http://www.heroinewarrior.com) The software is free, just make sure you get hardware that is compatible with Linux. The drawback? Well, it is Linux, you get a powerful stable platform with a lot of quirks to learn and get used to (Being a UNIX System Admin for a couple of years has helped me :) ).
That's about it, I have to go to work. :)
Regards,
Luis