Today’s editing computers are a marvel in my opinion. Did you know that before computers, it took around ONE MILLION DOLLARS of equipment to stock a professional editing room?
You needed:
- multiple tape decks
- a switcher
- an effects generator
- a character generator
- an audio mixer
- signal enhancers,
- multiple monitors and
- years of experience to operate it all.
To rent out all this much stuff, it cost $500-$1,000 per HOUR to edit.
If you were doing anything complicated, a two or three minute spot could easily take ten hours to edit. That’s TEN GRAND just for one step in the production of a video that lasts a few measly minutes!
OUCH!
We’ve got it great compared to that. Today, ten grand is MORE than enough to buy a total system and all the software you’d ever need to edit a lifetime of shows.
Computer editing is loads of fun and the creative possibilities are endless.
Computer editing revolutionized the entire television and video production industry. It put power in the hands of the little guy, not just the companies that could afford million-dollar edit suites.
For a small investment, (maybe nothing beyond a computer that has free video editing software already on it) you have the opportunity to produce professional quality edited video stories.
The timeline is at the bottom in the picture above. It usually is. (iMovie) The timeline is where you build your movie. You place your different video clips and audio clips in the timeline moving left to right. You build things in layers. There are different lines for audio and video.
There are lots of free programs that you can read about here.
If you want more creative and complex editing options than what freebies give you, you can get awesome software for $50-$300 and knock-your-socks-off. Here are some video editing programs to consider.
When Final Cut Pro first came on the market back in the late 90s, it was chump change at $1,000, compared to its competitor, Avid with its $50,000 version of Media Composer. At the time, people were clamoring to learn Media Composer because it seemed like such a revolutionary bargain compared to the million-dollar fully equipped suites. Then, all of a sudden, you can get a program equal to Media Composer for just a grand?
Holy cow!
Final Cut Pro’s price today is often under 50 bucks, which is dirt-cheap. FCP can do what used to take about one-million dollars worth of equipment.
Here is an older tutorial I made on Final Cut Express, which was a good version but had less formatting capability. This video is fairly general, so is useful for a beginner no matter what program you use.
Video editing software has a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, editing is fun. Good or bad editing can make your entire production good or bad.
Here at VideoProductionTips.com, we have an extensive article base and video tutorials that explain video editing.
If you are lucky enough to be able to buy a computer especially for editing video, get the biggest and baddest you can afford.
Video editing demands a lot of your computer. Video files are huge, and making them spin and dance requires power. Get the biggest, most powerful computer you can afford. A high RAM is also important.
Thanks for reading Video Production Tips
Lorraine Grula
Internet Video Gal
Interesting article – I’ve downloaded a copy of Sony Vegas to try out on a PC platform. I use Final Cut Pro myself, but we’re deploying this at work and cannot justify the purchase of a Mac system for one program!! That aside, FCP is definitely worth its weight.
But at home I use both a PC and a Mac – for different reasons. I’ve always been interested in this debate of PC vs Mac. Speaking as a recording musician with considerable amounts of money invested not only my computers, but also a whole lot of outboard Effects processors which are utilised in my sound editing environment, there is similar raging arguments and possibly more in the music production environment.
Mac users tend to swear by their Pro Tools setups, PC users swear by anything but Pro Tools. I’ve witnessed both environments in professional situations, and in my mind ‘real’ engineers know the advantages of both and utilise both in actual fact without getting all hot and bothered about it. The fact is, Mac does overcharge for certain things – like rebadging Samsung monitors as Apple and charging triple the price for one thing. Same goes for so-called “Apple” hard drives. Why do I want to pay 2 to 3 times the price for HDD simply because it has an Apple icon on it??? But when it comes to home setups, Pc definitely gets my money. In this area, I do think Mac are still too much into the business of charging for the design and look of their product rather than the performance of it.
I can get more performance out of my PC-based workstation and digital audio software (Samplitude) than my friend who spent over 10,000 on his Pro Tools LE setup – and his latest upgrade requirements are completely ridiculous, the PC-based world obliterated this kind of idiocy aeons ago. This is the kind of thing that th I hate to think what problems Snow Leopard is going to give him.
I use the Mac for tracking, and the PC for actual editing and manipulation. Samplitutde is quite simply a much better program than Pro Tools LE, far more versatile, and a complete PC rig would cost about 1/3rd of the price of getting something vaguely similar from a Mac.
So for me, and my approach to Video, it’ll come down to the same thing – I learnt video production on a Mac, but it doesn’t mean I should rule out certain PC-based software for doing certain things. As i said, FCP is definitely the best to get those ideas up and running fast and professionally.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Macs that actually perform use Intel these days, and that’s about as PC as you get 🙂
HI Alan
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. The Mac vs. PC debate does get a bit over the top. whenever those arguments raged I just sat back quietly and listened. I agree with what you say that both have pros and cons. I love my PC. And yes, Mac does stuff I think is outrageous sometimes. But over the years, they have been one step ahead on many innovative things and I think their software is better. But whatever…both have their advantages. In general, computers and computer editing are awesome little wonders of technology and I love them.
Thanks for such a great and thoughtful comment.
Lorraine
Hi Lorraine, love your tips. I have a question. On the Anistock site, I have access to download either Flash, Mobile, Medium Res at 480px * 3650 or HI Res Pla 720* 576, or Hi-Res NTSC 720*486. If I want to import the file into Sony Vegas Movie Studio platinum could you let me know which file type I should be downloading? Thank you very much.
Hi Linda!
Glad if my blog helps you! Do the hi-res NTSC. This will give you a nice clean, large, high resolution image for editing. You always want to have the best quality possible while you are editing, then when you convert it to a sharing format it will still look as good as possible. NTSC is the American standard for video, PAL is the equivalent in Europe. Glad you are using anistiock! They have great royalty free computer animation clips
I hope this helps!
Lorraine