"Dvorak contends that few have the time and talent
to edit video into something worth watching.
If you were to believe Apple's TV commercials, you'd think
the next killer application will be video editing on PCs. Gosh,
now you can take your boring home videos and make them into
fabulous productions. You can add titles, edit and clip, and
do all sorts of fancy wipes. Fantastic! Yeah, fantastic if you
have no life. For the average computer user, this application
stinks.
I don't want to tell you that computers aren't great for
video editing. In fact, they are great. But over the years,
I've concluded that people don't want to do video editing on
their PCs. I like shooting videos as much as the next guy, but
I prefer shooting digital still images when given a choice.
Still images are easy to distribute and easy to deal with. Most
people edit them simply by throwing the bad ones into the garbage
can. Very easy to do. Video editing is so time consuming that
unless you're a professional doing it for money, there's no
reason to do it at all.
I work in TV, and I know how much time video editing takes,
even when an expert does it. Producers on a budget love live
broadcasts or live-to-tape broadcasts, because post production
(a.k.a. video editing) costs a fortune. Only high-budget shows
or long-time-to-market labor-of-love productions can afford
it. So how does the average consumer with a camcorder fit into
this picture? He or she really doesn't. Perhaps someone can
get a good video editing system and make one great production
from a pile of home movies, but doing it over and over for the
sole purpose of showing movies to your bored family and tolerant
friends gets old fast. Raw footage tends to be more fun and
interesting than an over-produced amateur presentation.
I did a lot of video editing with a fairly professional
Video Toaster rig a few years ago for some speeches I was doing.
I got fairly good at it, but producing a minute of finished
video still took an hour, not an uncommon ratio. Much of the
time is spent looking through hours and hours of video to find
what you need. The more video you accumulate, the worse this
gets. Then there's the tweaking. You ask yourself, "Should
I start with this frame or that frame? Should I use this dissolve
or that dissolve?" Anguish kills another boatload of time.
After a while, you realize why video-editing studios charge
so much money.
Still photography is the world's number one hobby, because
it's easy and fun. Producing videos is not easy and is rarely
fun. Video editing software is great for the wannabe writer/producer/director
who wants to go pro someday, but it's not a mass-market item
and won't ever be, no matter how many camcorders are sold.
Where PC-based video editing shines is for professionals
who wants to do work on the side-people looking for a cheap
way to piece together an editing systems, so they can produce
something inexpensively for money!
A friend of mine who has made Hollywood productions and
has been in and out of the business for years says that the
combination of Adobe Premiere and After Effects and a semipro
digital camcorder such as the Canon XL-1 can let you produce
broadcast-quality material or even a minor feature film. Many
companies (including Sony) now can transfer video to film using
technologies that make it look as if the video was shot on film
in the first place.
The Adobe bundle sells for $995, and the Canon camera goes
for about $3,800. You still need a fast computer with a huge
hard disk and other add-ons, which I figure at about $3,000.
Total with two cameras equals $11,595 plus tax. Goofballs looking
for a cheap hobby should look elsewhere, but for the independent
professional, this price is a steal, since comparable studio
gear might go as high as $50,000 or more. (Professional cameras
cost about $35,000).
Needless to say, professional gear is more rugged and more
evolved than consumer gear, but if you know what you're doing,
the difference in finished product should be negligible. But
knowing what you're doing is the hard part. This "studio
on the cheap" technology may bring forward some seething
genius who could never find funding at Hollywood prices, but
it will also flood us with pathetic and amateurish attempts
at entertainment, much of which will be shown to captive family
members in the form of horrid home movies. Desktop video will
definitely not be a mass-market killer app."
