CompuServe Messages

Jack, You are making great headway into understanding the methods and techniques of DeskTop Video Production! One slight clarification about your analog vs. digital editing however. When you do A/B Roll edits, you typically need a Switcher to "switch" the video signal that is being recorded from the one source, to the other. These Switchers today are almost all digital, where the Switcher will, for a few frames, digitally manipulate the video streams. Otherwise, I think your definition is accurate. Also, the only time that you lose a significant amount of quality in a professional editing system today, is when you record to tape. The first time you record to tape, it will look quite good. From then on when you play that taped signal back edit it, and re-record it, you will start to lose quality. This is why there are $20,000 VTRs out there, they lose less quality in each generation than a consumer level VTR does. So, if your "Switcher" can do more work in "one-pass", in a analog, or as it is oftenly called today "linear" environment, you will have less generations and, given the same quality of tape machine, a higher quality finished result. The decks you buy should keep this consideration in mind. Hi-8 is a good format for maybe one to three generations, if you are real careful. The "edit controller" that you use should support the Hi-8 decks that you have now, which are hopefully "Control-L" equipped. With these decks, in a linear system you should be about 2-3 frames accurate. A normal analog A/B editing environment will consist of; 2 Source VTRs with Control Interfaces (RS-422, RS-232, or Control-M, Control-C, etc.) 1 Recorder with a Control Interface as above A Video Switcher w/a control Interface (In today's world, a computer with Hardware and Software for Machine Control, Edit Decision List Management, Painting, Titling, 3D Modeling and Animation, and Video/Audio Switching) A normal digital A/B editing environment will consist of; 1 VTR (source and recorder) with Control Interface A Video Switcher like the above with; One or more large, fast, hard disk drives for recording, manipulating, and playing back the final production. I hope this helps some… please let me know if you have other questions. -John