Digital Video: Customized Home Movies
Is This The Holiday Season You'll Get Into Digital Video?
--Why digital video rules
--Editing digital video with the iMac
--Bringing old VHS tapes into the modern age.
It's Christmas. The children are nestled all snug in their beds. You can almost hear the lines from "A Christmas Story" (or you can literally hear them if you click these .wav files) as visions of official, Red Ryder, carbine-action, two-hundred shot, range-model air rifles dance in their heads. (Editor's note: "You'll shoot their eye out!")
As you hang the stockings by the chimney with care, there's only one final question: What do you want under the tree Christmas morning?
If you recently received one of the new digital video (DV) camcorders, the ones that record a high-quality, digital-video signal to tiny tape cassettes, here's a suggestion: Why not ask for a new computer so you can edit those tapes?
(At this point, you might want to consider placing your tree on cinder blocks so there's plenty of room underneath for big boxes. As an alternative, you can replace your Christmas stocking with jumbo control-top pantyhose with reinforced toes. Caution: Make sure Santa knows exactly what you want. You don't want to wake up Christmas morning and find Roseanne hanging from your mantle. Bah, humbug!)
I'll suggest some computers from Apple, Compaq and Sony. But first, a look at what's so special about DV camcorders.
Quite simply, DV camcorders make the best video pictures of any of the consumer tape formats. Because they record a compressed digital signal, the format has twice the video resolution of the old VHS format and much better audio.
VHS: So Passe
Old VHS camcorders produce images that look like interpretations by Pablo Picasso as colored by a 4-year-old with a limited set of Crayolas. People never look quite right and the colors don't "stay within the lines." Digital pictures are sharp, clear representations of what you see, and because the signal is digital, there's no generation loss when dubbing or editing.Generation loss refers to imperfections that develop when analog tapes are dubbed or edited, resulting in lost detail and glitches in the picture. Each succeeding copy or "generation" of tape looks worse than the last. (For us old guys, it's easy to accept the concept that succeeding generations aren't as good-looking as the last.)
Another advantage to DV camcorders is the IEEE 1394 port. Say, what? That's the engineer's term for what Sony calls i.Link and Apple calls FireWire -- a high speed digital connection between digital devices such as camcorders, computers, disk drives, etc. A tiny, 6-pin connector on the side of the camera routes digital audio, video and device-control signals from the camcorder to computers, other camcorders or other IEEE 1394 devices.
How fast is fast? At 400 megabits per second, it's 40 times faster than a standard network connection. IEEE 1394 is the fastest digital connection currently available on home PCs.
Great Image -- Let's Play With It!
Sony, Compaq and Apple all sell computers at well under $2,000 that let you copy DV video over an IEEE 1394 connection, edit it on your computer, and copy it back to tape -- with no loss in quality.Is it quick? You bet! Is it easy? Of course! Is it just like the pros use? In the words of the Hertz commercials, "Not exactly!"
As an example of what's available at the low end of digital video editing, I got a demo of iMovie. That's the digital video editing software that comes installed on the iMac DV Special Edition, the DV-ready version of Apple's well-received, quick-surfing iMac home computer. John Hyde of firstTECH Computer in Minneapolis, an Apple dealer, manned the helm.
iMovie software comes with both the iMac DV and the iMac DV Special Edition -- models which have FireWire ports. The two tiny FireWire connectors on the side of iMac DVs can be connected to printers, disk drives, digital cameras -- indeed, any number of FireWire devices, including DV camcorders.
iMovie is incredibly simple and intuitive to use, thanks to the FireWire connection. A single cable running from the camcorder (left) to the computer (below, right) handles all audio and video connections between the two devices in both directions. It also you to use the iMac's mouse to click icons on the screen that control the camcorder's functions -- play, rewind, record, etc.
The actual editing process is nearly as simple as the connection. You can record selected video scenes onto the hard drive in real time. The scenes can be "trimmed" and are represented as small pictures ("picons") on the computer screen. The picons are then "dragged" onto a timeline interface in the order in which you'd like them to appear in your final film.
It's like the game Scrabble, where you line up the letter tiles on a small plastic easel to spell words. You can add a few video effects between scenes by selecting the icon of an effect -- let's say a dissolve, a fadeout from one scene and into another -- and dragging it into the timeline between scenes. Using the Scrabble analogy, it would be like having the letters for "led" on your easel, drawing the tile "a" and making a new word "lead." (Of course, the word score for lead is something like 2, so you won't win many games, but you get the idea.)
You can also add music and titles to your movies just as easily.
It's Still Amateur Hour
There are drawbacks to iMovie -- and indeed, to all the low-cost consumer editing solutions. As Robert Heinlein might say, "TANSTAAFL (There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)."Professionals pay a lot of money for computer driven editing equipment. Why? Better hardware. It takes a lot of "horsepower" to convert digital bits to video pixels, especially when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pixels 30 times per second for standard video. All of the "professional solutions" for both PCs and Macs add additional processing power just to create full-frame, full-motion, full-resolution video from digital bits.
The iMac uses software to recreate the video on screen. The computer screen displays the video at a lower resolution and a lower frame rate than DV video. It appears noticeably jerky, but I found it acceptable for its use, and especially its cost. It's important to note that the video being edited is unaffected; only the computer display is at a lower frame rate and resolution. Editing and recording are at full resolution and full frame rates. No quality is lost in the process.
A professional edit system features "real-time" effects -- if you want a dissolve between scenes, you push a button and it happens. With iMovie, all of the video effects and titling options must be "rendered," meaning for a dissolve, meaning the videotape is dipped in boiling water until all the frames dissolve and rise to the surface. (Kidding -- just trying to make sure we all were paying attention.) Actually, it means that iMovie has to methodically meld each frame with the next one. This takes time, but again, considering that iMovie is for the occasional home editor and not a professional, it works just fine.
I've worked as a video producer and have edited videotape the "old-fashioned" way. I can recommend iMovie on the iMac DV as an excellent program for editing home movies. If you prefer the PC, check out machines from Sony and Compaq.
Sony makes a "black box," the DVMC-DA1 (right), that does the same thing, but why spend money for a "black box" when you can get a camcorder for a little more?
If you already have the computer and the DV camcorder, but no FireWire connection, check out The Silver List, an excellent Web site with complete information on IEEE 1394 editing and recommendations for add-on equipment for PCs.
What About My Old Tapes?
If you're in the market for a DV camcorder and have a closetful of older VHS or 8-millimeter tapes, look for this feature: Some DV camcorders have video and audio inputs and will allow you to connect an old-style VCR to your camcorder. This setup will allow you to copy older tapes, through the camcorder onto, your computer for editing.The Mac Lovefest Continues
For all of you who sent in e-mails about the comment in my last column that the iMac mouse "sucks" ? during my trial run of iMovie, I did try cupping the mouse and using the base of my fingers to "click," as some of you suggested. It does work much better and I could get used to it, but I'd still prefer something a little bigger.
Speaking of e-mail, one of many who wrote about how he came to know and love the iMac was Thomas Gates of Minneapolis. Excerpts:
"I had run Apple II equipment for years. My last Apple II was the II-GS -- actually a very stable machine in its own right with a number of Mac OS functions, (but) by the time I needed more than the II-GS could offer, the Mac was in a total tailspin. So I made the switch to the PC platform ? I finally grew really tired of Windows 95.
"Years later the iMacs made their first store showings, and I attended a Mac user group meeting. They pulled a 'whole' iMac from the box. The rep's 7-yr old son put it together, plugged it in and started it up. Wow! I could probably do that.
"I had my wife stop into the store to see one (this took all-out bribery). Spent about 10 minutes looking at the machine, watching the demo, clicking around a bit. I thanked her for even stepping foot in the store and began to head out at the agreed 15-minute deadline. As we walked the aisle to the door, she tapped a salesperson on the shoulder and asked 'what do we have to do to buy one of those" -- pointing back at the iMac. I nearly had to be carried from the store.
"Sincerely, it took me longer to open the box than it did to put the iMac together and have it running programs. I tip my hat to Apple for a very smart machine (in styling as well as setup)"
Don't you love it? An iMac fan named Gates.
Thanks again to all who wrote. Remember, I need your full name and your home city and state if I'm going to include excerpts in my column.
--Tom Egan has worked the information business from photography and journalism to video production and online editing. He writes about technology from his home in Saint Paul, Minn., within three blocks of four bars that serve Guinness on tap.
