by Pat Leong
The
following information was originally written in February 1999, and has
been updated regularly since then. As with any information about
hi-tech stuff, it helps to know when it was written so you know how timely
it is. This information simply reflects my experiences and thoughts.
You may or may not be in a similar situation. If you are like me,
you are probably looking for someone's detailed experiences to measure
your thoughts against. | After spending several months looking through all the exciting developments on DV and NLE systems, I finally took the plunge and got my system. I made the move at the beginning of December, 1998. It was difficult to come to a decision on exactly what to do because there was so much data out there, and so much of it was changing rapidly. |
I first had to decide what was I going to do with the system. For me, editing videos has been a hobby, not a real money maker. I've done many special wedding presentations (not full on wedding videos) and other special video presentations with a Hi8 camcorder, SVHS VCR, Videonics MX1 mixer, an Ambico FX generator, audio mixer, and various other pieces of equipment. My "Simple" style of presentation and ability to "edit in the field" got a lot of praise from people who shot weddings professionally, which made me feel good, but the equipment I used required a lot of time to combine the elements together and was very stressful. More recently, most of my friends are married now, and I am a new father, so I wanted to focus on cleaning up really OLD home movies and videos. Making money with an NLE system was not going to be a thought, unless an occasional job just fell into my lap. I've got too much to do, especially if I want to be a loving father and husband. Going with DV instead of analog meant that I could re-edit any video at any time and the picture quality would still be great ... with analog ... no way. Prices of DV equipment and computers were dropping and it seemed like a great time to jump in.
Here's what I went through in getting my system together.
1) Should I buy a turnkey system? I hear so many horror stories about people who struggle to get their NLE systems working. I didn't want to have to spend days or weeks trying to tweak things and make it work. Maybe buying a turnkey system is the way to go? After looking around at prices ... I realized I was too cheap to pay someone for the expertise of putting together a system for me. Plus, there were not a lot of choices as to what I could put in the machine. The more customized it got, the more expensive it got. The turnkey systems were very appealing, like the Promax Firemax system ... which was exceptionally appealing for the price range, AND at the time, they also had features like batch capture ... which seemed to be missing everywhere else. I realized the importance of batch capture in helping to re-edit "living projects" ... family videos are essentially living projects ... especially if it is one that captures family histories ... every time a new kid is born, you gotta add them to the video, or as they grow older, you gotta capture those significant events in life. Simply put, I decided to hold off on my decision to buy until I heard of more solutions w/ batch capture capability.
At the time (Summer 1998), Compaq just started coming out with PCs with 1394 ports in them. They sounded like nicely integrated systems, but low on software, and again, you pretty much had to get what they sold ... not a lot of room for customization. A little while later, Sony started coming out with the VAIO, but that too locked you into a particular configuration. What if you want to add extra drives or a CD-ROM burner, etc?