"Shoot to Show" and "Shoot to Edit" are two different styles requiring different methods of planning. No one knows these techniques better than a run-and-gun News Photographer. I've produced video on nearly every conceivable subject during my 15 years as a television news p

A Comparison of DV Camera Formats "No, I didn't shoot it on DV, I shot it on DVCAM!" A while back I heard a friend say that. I understood perfectly what he meant, but for just a moment I was tempted to respond "Hey, DVCAM is DV." It reminded me that th

LaCie LaCie's FastCoder is a pocket-sized hardware MPEG-1 and -2 encoder that attaches to the FireWire port of any recent Macintosh. The bus-powered device can encode MPEG-2 streams from 2 to 10 Mbps in either CBR or VBR modes. DVD/VCD authoring software and backup software are also included.

$1,695 ($295 academic price) Avid Technology Inc. Avid Technology Park One Park West Tewksbury, MA 01876 (800) 949-2843 www.avid.com Xpress Yourself (in HDV) It's difficult to discuss an Avid product without paying homage to the company's pre-eminent position within the professional video

The A/V Raider Do you need to do some light video capturing, or have a pile of analog videotapes that you want to send directly to DVD? Do you abhor your computer’s existing sound capabilities? Creative’s USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor might be your answer for both needs. It&

Mankind has always looked for the easy way out. Rubbing sticks together was a pain, so we found our way to matches… then Zippo lighters… then we flicked our Bics. It’s technology chasing the common task and trying to make everyone’s life easier. And that brings us to logging

Virtual green screen sets are no longer just for the privileged Hollywood bigwigs. New compositing technology is making Hollywood movies virtually, well, virtual (check out the latest Star Wars flick, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for a stunning example.) The same technology is available right on

Hearing the phrase “good software” together with the word “value” seems like an oddity these days, as prices keep going up, big bugs keep surfacing and product cycles keep getting shorter. But Nero 6.6 is truly a piece of good software that is certainly a value, especially if

$299 Animated Communications P.O. Box 16907 Chapel Hill, NC 275161 (800) 949-559 Want to turn your kid into a penguin, a butterfly or a cartoon character? Or would you prefer to send him into outer space? No, we don't mean literally, but with video special effects, of course. Animated Communic

When I was exploring photography as a youth, I never forgot one of the early lessons I learned. I was reading an interview between a professional photographer and his student – and the student, on looking through the pro's portfolio commented, "Man — don't you ever shoot

The new Video Advantage PCI video capture system from Voyetra Turtle Beach is one of the easiest and least expensive solutions for getting DV or analog video into and out of your computer we’ve tested so far. If you enjoy creating home videos or need to edit the occasional wedding and donR

Sadly, most camcorders only offer a puny 1/8-inch microphone jack for attaching to the outside audio world. Mixers and professional microphones generally don't come with 1/8-inch connectors, so now what will you do? It's time to gather all your audio adapters, sit down with your equipment

It’s a very common set of questions readers ask us: “When I’m shopping for a video editing computer, what should I look for? Should I buy a Mac or a PC? What are the minimum system requirements for a desktop machine that can handle the rigors of nonlinear editing? How fast should t

Magix Gets Serious The low-cost video editing software market has really been heating up in the past year or so, resulting in a plethora of low-cost, full-featured video software packages. Case in point: Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, a rich, well-rounded solution that costs about as much as a newly minte

Who could have figured that 150 years after the Civil War — that signature event in American History — would forever change the way we video editors approach a part of our craft? Well, not the Civil War itself, but the Ken Burns documentary about it. For many, that program was where we

$390 Lite-On IT Corporation 726 S Hillview Dr Milpitas, CA 95035 (888) 845-8366 www.liteonit.com Right On Lite-On! If you're tired of your old VCR and a closet full of clunky VHS tapes, then get a DVD Recorder. If you want one with lots of features at a relatively low pric

Steve Jobs, Apple Computer CEO, introduced iDVD 5 at this year’s MacWorld San Francisco keynote address as part of the iLife ’05 "digital hub" application suite. Complimentary to iMovie HD, iDVD 5 is a critical component of Apple’s push to allow "mere mortals" t

So you’ve read a few of the articles about using a tripod and you have actually tried a few lighting techniques, but you say your videos still lack pizzazz and finesse? You don’t have a lot of money to spend on a more advanced editing system and the computer you do have has enough troubl

With Stephen Muratore, Jennifer O’Rourke and Charles Fulton 2004 was a year of exciting innovations and improvements in consumer video technology. This is great news for videographers, of course, but a difficult proposition for the editors of Videomaker, now that it’s time to hand out aw

Focus Enhancements Ships MX-4 Video Mixer Focus Enhancements has shipped its new MX-4 video mixer, which processes video in a 10-bit 4:2:2 format (as used in its predecessor, the Videonics MXPro.) The MX-4 includes foreground and background graphics stores, an Ethernet port for connecting to a comp