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Digital Video for Dummies, Third Edition Review by tachi1
Reviewed by a rank amateur
I have my first digital video camera and, for the first time, the option to edit my long and boring captures. While I am very experienced at editing digital photos, this is an entirely new field for me. It seems to me that this "for dummies" version is still too advanced for me. I need one "for complete morons", apparently. This is a reflection on me, not on the book, which seems to be very thorough.
It goes into more detail than I need. I don't capture video with my phone; I don't have capture problems; the odds of my ever needing nightvision videos are nil; I'm not sure I need to know what the NTSC standards are, and on and on.
All I really wanted was a step-by-step way to:
*use the software that came with my camera to cut out unnecessary areas and restitch the remainter;
*suggestions on how to make a video capture flow, more or less seamlessly, despite the editing;
*ditto with the soundtrack;
*an overview of easy video editing programs that I can upgrade to if I should ever outgrow my camera's software (which doesn't look likely right now.)
*workflow suggestions as to how to backup and preserve video (I don't have that much faith that DVD's are still going to be in use a decade from now), so I wanted a general overview of options and suggestions.
I got the first four. It was a bit more technical than I wanted, but that may be because I didn't realize the full software/hardware implications, let alone the standards, frame rates, aspect ratios, interlacing, capture cards, or video converters issues--and I've still purposefully avoided the "advanced video editing" chapter. It seems to me that people, not too much brighter than I and with similarly-equipped home computers, have managed to edit their videos w/o knowing all this. Actually, ignorance is bliss sometimes and I'm not sure I want to know. (But if YOU want to know it, it's all here).
The issue of archiving and preserving video is not addressed. The author does suggest external hard drives as a way to save space on the internal ones. Maybe we have to endlessly keep updating our captures (super 8 to vhs; vhs to dvd; dvd to ??). I was hoping that some specific strategy to make the process easier and foolproof. It probably isn't fair for me to expect to have this issue addressed in a "for dummies" book, but preserving these memories going forward is the primary reason I shoot movies, and I'd like to think that there is someway that I can ensure that today's babies will be able to see their movies 30 or 40 years from now.