Possible paying video editing job, please help me figure out what I need to do it.

[Hulk]

I have been doing video editing projects for the past year or so using my ATI AIW, VideoStudio 4.0, and an older Hi 8 videocamera. Most of my captures have been using huffyuv or PicVideo MJPEG.

These projects have really just been simple editing of clips and stills with some transitions and sound added.

A friend of mine who is an administrator at a local school got a grant to do a documentary on their school system. He called me to see if I would be interested in handling the technical end if he did the creative side. The other option for the school would be for them to have it done out of house, which would most likely be very expensive.

The project will be about 1/2 hour long and we consist of local historical sites, schools, and children in school. Working, in plays, sports, etc...

I believe in order to get a good quality final result my best and cheapest option would be to go mini DV. I am considering the Sony TRV900 camera.

Is this camera good enough to get semi-professional output? Assuming I know how to handle it, of course.

Some other technical questions:

1. Is Videostudio enough or should I consider a more advanced program? I think VS can do what is required for this project. But I'm concerned about #3 below.

2. Can the TRV900 output to tape directly?

3. What about the 4GB file limitation? How do I get around that? The project would be a bit larger than 5GB.

4. After editing the project I assume I can output it back to MiniDV tape. Can I send this tape somewhere to have VHS dubs made?


I don't want to get in over my head here but I think I can do this and am looking forwared to the challenge. I would be happy if I got enough money from the job to pay off the gear required to do it.

How does one price a job like this?

I'm going to make a demo tape using the equipment I have to try to sell the school on the project.

Please tell me what you think? How should I go about this?

I would like to do it as cheaply as possible. At minimum I know I'll need a good camera, a card to get the data into my computer, and editing software. I just don't want to buy a bunch of stuff and not be able to do the job.

My computer is a PIII850 with 192MB of RAM and 60GB of hard drive space. I don't think that will be a problem.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[Dr Mordrid]

You can get around the 2/4 gig file limits by using the timeline preview to play to your tape, be it VHS or DV.

You can assemble a huge project this way, even if you can't save it to a disk as one continuous *.avi file.

Dr. Mordrid

[This_Idiot]

Hi Hulk,

Your next step really depends on the quality that you have been able to achieve so far with your current setup. If your Hi8 is still working well and the results you've managed to output to VCR are acceptable then don't consider changing the hardware at this stage. I've yet to convince myself that mini DV shows marked improvement over a reasonable quality analogue setup.

If you do decide to go DV then you are facing the additional expenditure of the camcorder and a suitable capture card (there are many to choose from with varying quality, and just as many opinions - I'm happy with an ADS Pyro).

You may be better investing in software, and in this case my own recommendation would be Ulead MSPro 5 for analogue work. You will have much more control over the project than with VS4, and it still supports the cutlist feature that Doc mentions to get you over the 2Gb barrier. If you decide on DV then the cheapest software option is to stick with VS4 - again more features are offered by MSPro but you would have to go to version 6 since 5 doesn't support DV.

Lastly look to your HD capacity, and make sure that you have plenty of space to store all the raw footage as well as preview files.

Chris