Please help newbie at DV editing
 

I'm new at DV editing. I'd like to know if there is a tutorial somewhere that goes through the workflow of what I need to learn. What NLE programs are most user friendly to start with? I'm fairly familiar with Adobe products and their interfaces and have just minimal exposure to Premiere 6.5 (should I just get a good instruction manual on Premiere and stick with that?) As far as HD goes, it seems like there are a lot of steps in editing, like de-interlacing, getting correct frame rates, what formats I can edit into (WMV, back to tape, DVD?), and then there's the DVD authoring process with tons of different encoders to work with. I'm very confused and don't even know where to start. I just want to do basic home editing for family/travel/hobby shooting and be able to learn how to author DVDs or play content back on a PC in HD or downsized for web viewing. Sorry for all of the questions. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Since all you want to do is basic video editing, Premiere would be a bit much for that (though if you already have it you might just want to learn it). If you don't already have Premiere, there are free/less expensive easier to learn editors.

If you have Windows XP you already have Windows Movie Maker. Likewise, on the Mac there is iMovie. Some other free editors are covered in this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47980

If you are willing to pay something, you could get Pinnacle Studio for around $100, which is probably about the best, easiest to use editor in that range. Others are covered here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=41978

The process you go through to capture/edit/output will be different depending on what program you use. However, nearly all these less expensive programs are designed to be user friendly in those categories.

At this point don't worry about frame rates, deinterlacing, etc. Most of the time, especially if you're just doing basic editing, these don't matter.

Adobe offer a starter non linear edit program called Premier Elements. Canopus offers another called Lets Edit 2. Details found here: http://www.canopus.us/US/products/Le...lets_EDIT2.asp

These will enable you to capture video onto your pc using an OHCI card, edit your material, save the result and burn to a dvd.

As far as I am aware both will only handle miniDV. If you want to capture from vhs or s-vhs, or to work with HDV or HD then you will need other solutions and more powerful programs.

Do bear in mind that there is a fairly steep learning curve at the outset but once over that hump it can be very rewarding.

PS Basically I do what you want to do.

Do you really intend to do HD ?
I wouldn't have thought you'd want to pay for a HD camera for hobby work.
I imagine you just want to stick with the DV format - unless you're lucky enough to own a HD home cinema ?!

I'll tell you that I bought Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, opened it up and thought I was trying to read chinese. I had no idea what I was looking at so I bought the training dvds made by Total Training. This was the best buy I could have made! It costs just over $150 for the dvd set on Ebay. That was well worth the money especially since I resold them right after I watched them and recouped most of my money. I am not a pro by far and still have some real world experience to get under my belt but this is just my advise.

I don't think anyone brought this one up yet, and Premiere guys, forgive me as I was once as you are but, Avid offers FreeDV that is available as a download with lots of tutorials and a forum devoted to new editors.

It's worth checking out. If you are planning to do any editing for a living, there used to be only one NLE to learn, Avid. Now there are 3. In order of importance in the editing community, Avid, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro 1.5 (and it's Axio hardware).

I have edited with Premiere since 4.2 but Avid hooked me and I can't go back. If someone bought me an Axio to edit HD with, I might switch again but Avid is still the primary industry standard. Try http://www.avid.com/freedv

Sean McHenry

Sean,

Yes, it's true that Avid offers their free video editor. But 1) It's very limited. In fact, I'd venture to say it's more limited than the free Windows Movie Maker that's included with Windows XP. And 2) All he wants to do is edit home video. From what he's told us it doesn't appear that he want to edit professionally for a living, in which case there's no need to learn the "industry standard" Avid interface.