Getting started with video editing

Shooting video has never been easier or cheaper. The quality of digital video far surpasses that of analogue formats such as VHS, S-VHS or Hi8, even when using entry-level equipment. With digital camcorders now available for less than £300 and analogue camcorders becoming scarcer, the time has never been better to make the move to digital video.

One thing that hasn't changed is the need to edit footage. There are few more severe tests of friendship than the ordeal of sitting through hours of unedited home movies, and even professional film-makers use but a fraction of the footage they shoot.

With analogue video, editing was an expensive and laborious business and up until recently, digital video editing required expensive add-on hardware and software. Now it's much simpler and much cheaper: once you have a camcorder and a PC you may well be able to get into editing without paying a penny more.

Getting started: the hardware
First, you need a camcorder. Although most digital still cameras offer a movie mode, which can be great fun, these are generally limited in terms of recording time, recording quality and features. So, we're going to concentrate on using dedicated digital camcorders.

These use various methods of storage and at the lower end of the market you'll find digital tape predominates. There are several standards - manufacturers such as Canon, Panasonic and JVC use MiniDV, which fits an hour or more of high-quality video on to a tape half the size of an audio cassette.

Sony also uses its own Digital8 and MicroMV formats. The choice of media format isn't that important, as all will give DVD-quality output. What's more important is the connectivity of the camera.

Practically all dedicated digital camcorders will have both analogue and digital connections. The former - usually labelled 'A/V out' or 'S-Video' - let you connect the camera to a television and play back the contents of the tape. The digital connection can be variously known as FireWire (an Apple trademark), iLink (Sony), DV or IEEE1394. These are all names for the same standard and you'll need a corresponding connection on your PC.

Although FireWire ports have been a standard feature of Apple Macs for some time, it's only recently that we've seen them fitted as standard to desktop PCs. If your PC doesn't have a FireWire port, this is not a problem - you can get a card that plugs into an empty PCI slot inside the computer. You can find a card-plus-cable bundle (many cameras don't come with a FireWire cable) for around £20.

You're also going to need a reasonably well-specified PC. We'd suggest a minimum of an 800MHz processor and 256MB of memory, plus as much hard disk space as you can afford. At the best quality, five minutes of video takes up 1GB of disk space, so if you're serious about making movies more than a few minutes long, consider getting a second hard disk to dedicate to video - an 80GB drive can be had for about £45.

Think about what you want to do with your completed movies. Although all digital camcorders have DV-out (so you can get your footage out of the camera and into the PC), not all have DV-in and you'll generally have to pay extra for this.

The reason for this is EU Customs legislation - camcorders with DV-in count as recording devices and attract a higher rate of duty. If you want to output your finished movie back on to tape in the camcorder in order to play it on a TV or transfer it to VHS cassette, then DV-in is essential.

There are other ways of distributing your movies. For the best quality, consider DVD, especially as recordable DVD drives for a PC can now be found for less than £100.

Alternatively, if you already have a CD-RW drive, then you can output to VCD format on a standard CD-R. The former will give you around an hour of video per disc, at a quality between VHS and DVD; the latter will give you around half the time but at DVD quality. These discs will play in a PC or a VCD player, but not all domestic DVD players will handle them.

What about software?
If you're starting video editing under Windows Me or XP, then look no further than Windows Movie Maker. It's free and it's good - if you are running Windows XP make sure you've downloaded version 2 from the Microsoft website.

Capturing video can be demanding on your system, so close down any other applications that aren't absolutely necessary. With the camcorder connected and switched to playback mode, start Movie Maker. Click on the Tasks button to show the list of possible activities, then choose 'Capture from video device'. This will summon the Capture wizard.

First, you'll be prompted for a name and location for the video file. The next step is to choose a recording quality. The recommended setting, 'Best quality for playback on my computer' will only give you a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. If you want to maintain the output quality of the camcorder, choose 'Digital device format'.

The next screen gives you the option of capturing the entire contents automatically - this is much less effort but might not work with all camcorders. If it doesn't, or if you prefer to capture manually, you can use the on-screen controls in the next screen to start and stop the camera.

Whether you capture manually or automatically, be sure to tick the Create clips box. This does exactly what it says - each separate piece of film you shoot will be represented by a thumbnail in the Collection pane (you can close the Tasks pane to see more).

The clever thing about this is that the video file downloaded from the camcorder isn't split up. Instead the clip information - and all subsequent editing - is stored in a project (.mswmm) file. Clips appear in Collections and you can combine clips from different collections into a movie.

Now comes the actual editing. You've got two overviews of your movie available. Storyboard view is the easiest - you just drag clips onto it and, optionally, drag transitions and other effects (you'll find these in the Collections menu) between and on to the clips. In Timeline view you have much more control. Each clip is shown sized according to its duration, and you can trim it from either end.

You can also add soundtracks, titles and text overlays, fine-tuning the timing of each. When you've finished editing your movie, you then need to save it as a standalone video file - remember it's still just a collection of raw video and sound files masterminded by the project file.

Once again, you're going to generate some hefty file sizes, but you have the choice of saving from DV-AVI (the highest, with 720 x 576 pixels at 25 frames-per-second) right down to Pocket PC format (208 x 160 at eight frames-per-second).

Video editing on a budget
Movie Maker is an excellent way to get started in video editing and if you select 'Movie Maker on the Web' from the Help menu, you'll find tutorials and resources. However, it's fairly restricting in some aspects - you're limited to Microsoft file formats, you can't create DVDs and adjusting sound levels is fairly basic.

The professional industry-standard video editor is Adobe Premiere, but at around £550 - or £1,350 if you want the full suite including After Effects Professional, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Encore DVD and Audition - Adobe isn't exactly giving this away.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of cheaper software. Magix Video Deluxe 2 Plus can be had for under £30 yet bristles with advanced features, such as the ability to work with 32 video or audio tracks, each of which can be faded in and out, a graphic equaliser, image enhancing and a DVD-authoring module.

Ulead VideoStudio 7 is easier to use than Video Deluxe, with a tabbed interface to take you through capturing, editing, adding effects, titling and so on. It has some nifty tricks such as video-in-video and 3D titling and comes with a separate DVD-authoring program.

Another budget favourite is Pinnacle Studio 8. This comes in a bewildering variety of standalone and hardware-bundled varieties, with the basic version starting at around £30 - add another £30 for DVD-recording capabilities.

Again, this has a very sleek interface: you tab between capturing, editing and rendering the final movie. In the editing tab you have all sorts of resources, such as DVD-chaptering, a huge array of visual effects, ultra-precise trimming of individual clips, rolling titles, speeding up or slowing down clips and much more.

There's also some excellent general editing advice in the online help, such as 'Pans, zooms, and other moving shots should always be separated by static shots'.

For the more adventurous film-maker
What do the high-end editors have that the budget ones don't? Inevitably, there are more bells and whistles. High-end packages such as Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Liquid Edition and Sony's Vegas 4 offer more ways of combining video, including chroma keying, where the subject is shot against a plain blue background which is then replaced by something else.

You'll also get 'keyframing', whereby animations, for example, are created by filling in the gaps between 'key' frames. Keyframing will also let you create your own custom transitions and cross-fades. You'll be able to colour-match clips from different shooting sessions and edit footage with single-frame accuracy.

Above all, high-end editors offer facilities that professionals need: fast editing; the ability to organise and tag content by project, client, and session; speedy and accurate navigation; and multiple timelines.

If you are using a lot of still content in your movies - old photos or paintings for example - then it can really bring things to life if you can zoom and pan around the photo. You see this a lot in documentaries: 'Of the six men who set out on that fateful expedition in 1889, only one, Hugo Hackenbush, was destined to return.'

You'll find this in top-level editors, or add-ons such as Adobe After Effects, but the best is a standalone application called Canopus Imaginate - the demo version is well worth a look, although you do have to register (free) at the Canopus website.

It's a wrap
In a short time we've seen home video editing escape from the domain of the well-heeled enthusiast into the reach of anyone with a digital camcorder, a PC with a FireWire port, and a piece of free software. As we hope we've shown here, it really can be that simple and you really can get professional-looking results, with separate speech and music soundtracks, titles and credits, scene transitions and effects with a simple set-up.

What's more, you'll get far better picture quality than was possible with analogue video. If you want to go further then it needn't cost a fortune: a budget editing program, a DVD recorder and (please) a tripod could have you turning out professional-quality DVDs for less than £200.

Getting rid of the shakes
A sure sign of amateur film-making is shaky footage. Unless you're striving for the hand-held look as a matter of style, try to keep the camera as steady as possible. Tempting though it may be, avoid too much panning and zooming - rather than wave the camera about, keep it still and make your actors do the work.

Your first accessory should be a tripod - even a cheap one will improve conversation or interview shots immeasurably. If you really want to walk with the camera, then you can use mechanical stabilisers such as the Steadicam JR. These work by counterbalancing the camera and shifting the centre of gravity to give smooth, movement. However, these take a lot of practice to master and are expensive.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Even in the budget range, many camcorders have digital image stabilisation. The idea of this is that the image is recorded using fewer pixels, leaving a margin around the edge. If the camera detects abrupt differences between the edges of two consecutive frames it will adjust the position of the image within the margins.

It isn't as effective as the optical stabilisation found in professional cameras but it can make a significant difference, albeit at the cost of image quality.

If you can't do this in-camera - or have some shaky footage that you want to improve - then it's worth taking a look at Dynapel Steadyhand. This is a post-production tool that gets rid of shakes in existing footage by analysing and comparing subject and camera movement.

It does this not just in the X-Y plane (up and down and side-to-side) but in rotation as well, so you can remove the familiar 'rocking' effect seen when the camera operator is walking. Steadyhand can make a remarkable difference to the steadiness of your footage, but it does decrease the video quality somewhat.

Analogue to digital
The easy way to get into digital video is, as we've seen, to jump straight in with a digital camcorder, a FireWire connection and no other baggage. But if you've got an analogue camcorder you still want to use, or footage on VHS tapes you'd like to rejuvenate, then this can also be done on a PC.

You'll need an analogue video capture card or converter and suitable software. You can buy a converter such as the Adaptec VideOh CD video converter kit - as the name suggests, this plugs into a USB port and takes input from a VCR, TV or analogue camera via RCA plugs.

If you prefer an in-PC solution then the Swann EzyCapture card plugs into a PCI slot inside the PC. At the time of writing, Amazon.co.uk had the Adaptec device at £50 and the Swann card at £37. If you don't mind spending a little more then have a look at the Pinnacle products: Studio Deluxe gives you a FireWire card and cable, a breakout box that lets you input from and output to analogue devices, video-editing and DVD-authoring software - all for around £170.

CONTACTS
Adaptec: No UK phone number
www.adaptec.com

Adobe Premier: 0870 606 0325
www.adobe.com

Canopus: 01189 210150
www.canopus-uk.com

Magix Video Deluxe: 0800 056 1799
www.magix.com

Pinnacle Studio: 01895 424210
www.pinnaclesys.com

Steadyhand: No UK phone number
www.goodervideo.com

Swann Ezycapture: No UK phone number
www.swann.com.au

Ulead Video Studio: 01327 844880
www.ulead.co.uk

Windows Movie Maker 2: 0845 700 2000
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker