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Home Digital Video Editing Breakthrough from miro!!The following article was written by Gary Bettan and published in the May issue of Camcorder & Computer Video Magazine. |
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If you think that non linear digital editing is too expensive or too difficult for you, it is time to rethink your position. Not only is the DC10 cheap (under $500), it is super easy to install, and it works great with a big EIDE drive. While the DC10 is not designed for professional or event videographers, it is perfect for home users. Once you get your hands on the DC10 and start non linear editing your videos, you will fully understand why the future of video is digital.
Adding a digital transition, such as a dissolve or page flip between two video clips is super easy. You just bring the two desired clips into the video timeline and have the end of clip 1 overlap the beginning of clip 2. You then insert the transition of your choice between the two overlapping segments. WOW, do you get a load of super cool transitions! You can also add filters, titles and graphics. Better still, you can bring in a digital audio file and have your video set to music. Now you have no worries about audio glitches or having to buy special VCRs with audio dub. My favorite projects are taking several clips of my son Max, and setting them to a cool song. You will be amazed at just how powerful non linear editing is. With the DC10 you can create movies that look as cool as anything you see on MTV.
The one thing about NLE that many don’t realize is that the video has to be rendered (or created) from the timeline. This means that a new file is created, from the raw video footage with all the titles, effects and filters added. This rendering process can take several hours for a 5 minute video, depending on the complexity of your project. You do not have to be there when the rendering process happens. You can start it, go out to dinner, and then play back the new finished movie when you get home!! The other important requirement of NLE is that you need to have room on your hard drive for both the raw and finished video.
More expensive cards like the DC30 use 640x480 full screen compression. While these full screen cards can capture higher quality video, they require special AV SCSI hard drives to do this. I was very impressed with the great image quality and smooth playback of the DC10.
I recommend DC10 very highly to anyone looking to get started in digital video editing. For a computer, let me suggest a Pentium 133, 16 megs of Ram and a 2+ gig hard drive. For best results, create a separate partition for your video clips. Better yet, use a 2nd dedicated drive! Today you can find a PC with this configuration, fully multimedia loaded for around $2000. This means that for under $2500 you can have a complete home digital video editing studio, plus plenty of room for internet applications, word processing, and all your other programs.
A couple of months ago I reviewed miro’s new top of the line video capture board the DC30. Now miro has taken their award winning technology and introduced a product aimed at and priced for the home video editor!! The DC10 lets anyone with a Pentium PC capture video and digitally edit it. The finished video can then be either played back on the computer’s VGA screen or output to video tape. What is Non Linear Editing (NLE), and why do I want it?
NLE is a three step process.
The DC10 ships with its own custom software called miroMedia Manager for handling video capture and playback. This software was extremely easy to use and set up. It is a definite plus of this board over other boards on the market that rely on the standard Win95 applications.
DC10 also includes Ulead Video Editor software for actually editing the video. What I liked best about this program was the easy to use interface and short learning curve. Like the industry standard, Adobe Premiere, you edit the clips from a timeline. The timeline lets you graphically see all the elements of your video. You get two main timelines for video, one for titles and transitions and 3 more for additional images and video. You also get several audio timelines. You can move around clips by dragging and dropping them into the timeline. Clips can be trimmed to the frame, so every edit point is on the money and frame accurate!
What is the video quality of the DC10?
The DC10 captures video using a ½ frame 320x480 image. By digitizing ½ the information, you can compress it less. The lower the video compression, the better the video looks. ½ frame capturing lets the card capture full motion video at low compression on an EIDE drive. Although the capture size is ½ frame, the playback is full speed, full screen on to your VCR or TV. Not only did the video look great, playback was smooth and jitter free! In fact, I’d say the video quality is as good as you get from old fashioned deck to deck editing with stand alone consumer editing gear.