P4 1gb
If you're new to PC video editing then knowing where to start can be a bit daunting, so hopefully this guide will point you in the right direction.
To start with you will need a few items of equipment
Camcorders/Video Decks
Depending on your requirements or aims there are number of different solutions to discuss, so i will split these up into separate sections.
1. If you are starting from new then i recommend buying a new digital camcorder, this will give you superior video and sound quality as well as making getting started in video editing very simple, so ideal for the beginner. There are thousands to choose from catering for various types of budgets.
2. You may already have an old video deck or camcorder which uses the old analogue outputs such as composite or s-video (be sure to check first what outputs you have).
For this kind of setup you would need a capture card/analogue to digital converter, this is discussed in more detail further on in the article.
A PC for Video Editing
It is now possible to easily capture footage from your Digital Camcorder directly to your PC and edit it.
If you looking at buying a new PC or building a new one then the currents spec's are more then powerful enough, a typical spec PC these days is a P4, 512Mb Ram, 80Gb HDD, Windows XP or something along those lines.
You could always use your existing PC if you have one, but i wouldn't recommend using anything below a PIII 600.
Additional Hardware
When transferring video from your camcorder to your PC there are a number of additional things to consider depending on the type of camcorder your using.
If you're using a digital camcorder then all your need is a firewire card (also known as an IEE1394 card), a lot of current PC's have these as standard now, otherwise you will need to purchase the card separately. Some of these will come bundled with editing software such as Adobe Premiere but this really depends on which card you buy and how much you spend, once your camcorder is connected to your firewire port windows will automatically recognise your Digital Camcorder.
If your using the old analogue camcorder then you will also need an analogue to digital converter, see the section on video editing cards below.
Speed?
Its worth considering your Pc's Processor speed, the speed will effect the rate your video will encode, encoding is where your DV video clips are converted into a more compressed format, for example DVD's are encoded to MPEG2. So the faster the better really. Also consider the amount of RAM in your PC, 256Mb would be the minimum.
Extra Hard Drive Storage
Its worth considering having an extra dedicated drive for your video footage, remember that five minutes of DV footage uses 1GB of hard drive space so consider a large capacity hard drive such as an 80Gb or 120Gb, also consider the disk drive RPM, at least 7200RPM would be recommended.
If your PC supports it (most new ones do now), then a Serial ATA (SATA) drive will offer increased date transfer rates of up to 150MB/sec compared to 100 or 133 offered by the IDE drives, you may also consider a SCSI drive if you're PC has an SCSI adapter as standard.
DVD/CD Burners
If your planning on putting your film onto CD-ROM (VCD), or DVD then a CDRW or DVDRW is an essential piece of kit, most new pc's may have a CDRW or DVDRW as standard, to burn your DVD, you'll need DVD authoring software.
Video Editing Cards
If you have and older analogue video camera/deck then an analogue USB or PCI capture cards will suffice.
These dedicated analogue to digital converters take process of conversion away from the CPU and therefore speeds up transfer.
If worth getting a quality capture card as the cheaper cards can produce mixed results,
The Video Editing Software
This is where all your creative work starts and the creative work starts, you can capture video from your camera, edit the captured clips, arrange them into a sequence, add transitions, credits and a soundtrack, titles and when your ready export your movie back to the camera or a suitable encoded file format (DVD, VCD etc).
Founder of http://www.avmechanic.co.uk, offering a free friendly helpful community for anybody that needs computer help or help with PC editing products
What Is On YouTube Today?
Resident Evil 5 Pentium 4 3ghz + 9400GT + 1GB Ram
Here Are Some Items From Amazon You Might Like.
 EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti FPB 1024 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready Graphics Card, 01G-P3-1556-KR List Price: Sale Price: $132.18 You save: $17.81 (12%)  Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days  |
 Dell GX280 Tower Computer (2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD Optical Drive, Windows XP Professional) Sale Price: $74.95 Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Kingston Technologies 1GB DDR SDRAM Desktop Memory (KVR400/1GR) List Price: Sale Price: $19.50 You save: $41.49 (68%) Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Kingston 1GB DDR Module for Compaq Evo D310/510 ( KTC-PR266/1G ) List Price: Sale Price: $20.00 You save: $42.00 (68%) Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Dell Latitude D610 14" Laptop (2.00GHz Centrino Processor, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive) Sale Price: $133.99 Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 2GB Kit 2 X 1GB DDR2 Memory for Dell Dimension C521, Dell Dimension E521 PC2-6400 240 pin 800MHz NON-ECC DIMM RAM (PARTS-QUICK) Sale Price: $22.69 Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Fast Dell 620 USFF Desktop Computer, Extremely Quiet and Powerful System in a Ultra Small Form Factor Design, Powerful Intel 2.8Ghz Intel P4 Processor, 1GB Interlaced High Performance Memory, Extra Large 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, DVI (Digital Video) Onboard, DVD/CDRW, Write CD's and Watch DVD Movies, Extremely Quiet System, Windows XP with COA Sale Price: $114.99 Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 REFURBISHED DELL GX260 SLIM P4 1.8GHz 20GB 256MB Desktop PCs Intel List Price: Sale Price: $75.00 You save: $164.99 (69%) Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Fast HP DC7600 Computer Desktop P4 1gb 80gb DVD-Rom Keyboard/Mouse included List Price: Sale Price: $133.00 You save: $166.99 (56%) Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
 Dell 2.8 Ghz. Super Fast Optiplex Pro GX 1 Computer, Gigantic 750GB Hard Drive, 4GB RAM, CDRW/DVD Combo, Intel P4 Single Core Multimedia Desktop PC, includes New Licensed Windows XP 2 Operating System and Genuine Sealed CD, SP 3 Sale Price: $215.00 Eligible for free shipping!Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days |
Items recently purchased on this site:
Thanks for visiting!