CompuServe Messages

Lance: >Since I am just beginning to do this I would like some help setting up my system to edit video. It just seem a waste of computing power to use two VCR's. Basically I would like to know what basic hardware pieces to get to edit my work. I plan on entering my work into film festivals, so I am interested on professional capability. I an not interested in you giving advice on namebrand information, just what is needed to do the job. I have a 486DX2-66 system with 16 meg of RAM, 256k cache, 300 meg Hardrive (I know, small), 3 x 32-bit EISA Bus slots, 5 x 16 bit ISA Bus slots, 2 x 32-bit VESA Bus slots, ThunderPro 1024 x 768 graphics card w/ 1meg.< W/a hard drive that size, non-linear editing (NLE) wouldn't be a wise option since digitized video is SUCH a memory hog! (In case you're not sure, NLE takes your video footage, digitizes it to your computer, and lets you edit your digitized footage and then output it back to videotape.) I'd suggest a "hybrid" system like the Fast Video Machine Lite (which I'm currently using) or the new Toaster for Windows. What it will do is A/B roll linear edit your footage (so you can do dissolves, wipes, etc.), and allow you to place computer graphics onto your videotape for titles, etc. Or, if you'd rather not use your computer, Videonics and Panasonic make a digital video mixers so you can do dissolves and other special effects, Videonics makes a nice, reasonably priced titler, and Videonics is also coming out this summer (they say) w/an A/B roll edit controller (Future Video also has a couple, both for use with and without your computer). Outside of your hard drive size, your computer seems perfectly DTV-worthy, IMHO. A Pentium would be better, admittedly, but what you've got sounds perfectly usable. Hope this helps, Tim Liebe