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Digital camcorders (DV and Digital8) are now common and affordable, and editing DV footage on a PC is relatively hassle-free. It's simply a matter of transferring the already-digitised video from the camcorder tape into the PC and manipulating it there.
Studio DV is a PCI card that provides for every step of the process. The transfer is handled by a standard Firewire (IEEE1394) interface card and the supplied connecting cable.
First the video is captured from the camcorder. StudioDV automatically detects the scene changes and splits the footage into clips, displaying a mini-grab of the first frame of each in an album for identification.
Captured video takes up a lot of hard disk space (2.2Gb for 10 minutes). However, Studio DV allows a 'preview quality' capture mode in which you can still use all the editing functions but which consumes only 25Mb for 10 minutes of video. When you come to make the finished movie, StudioDV recaptures the full-quality video as needed.
With the video clips on your hard disk, editing is a matter of dragging and dropping the clips onto a storyboard or Timeline display in the required order. Then you can add a choice of 100 transitions (wipes, fades and so on), titles from the comprehensive editor, still images grabbed from your DV tape, and sounds.
The finished movie can be turned into an AVI, MPEG-1 or RealVideo file (with no Windows 2Gb file limit) or played back through the interface to record on the camcorder. However, few UK camcorders have Firewire inputs so you cannot then play the movie through the camcorder or record it. It's PC-based movies only.
Contact: Pinnacle Systems 01895 424228
Minimum requirements: Windows 98, Pentium II 233MHz PC, 32Mb RAM, DirectX 6.0 VGA display card, large hard disk for video storage.
See also:
The DV500 has everything you need to capture and edit your digital video films. 30 Apr 2000All Video and TV Cards
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