Digital Video Cameras - More Fun Than Ever

With your trusty digital video camera by your side you can capture all those special moments, such as your child's first steps, your birthday or wedding, or your vacation with family and friends etc.

With so many manufacturers and models available in the digital video market, you may find it confusing trying to choose the perfect one for you. Your choice will, however, depend on the features that you want and how much you are willing to spend.

The most important thing to consider is the format in which your videos will be stored, as the video format determines the video quality. Digital 8 otherwise called D8, Mini-DV, DVD and HDD are the main types of video format that digital cameras offer. Both D8 and Mini-DV are tape-based formats, with the Mini-DV currently offering the highest quality video format to consumers. The DVD format allows direct video recording onto a digital disk, while the HDD type uses internal hard drives where the video is recorded. As the tape format is slowly being phased out by major manufacturers, it is a good idea to invest in disk or hard drive based digital video cameras.

Digital video cameras also come with charged coupled device or CCD imaging sensor. Digital video cameras come with 1-CCD or 3-CCD features. Cameras with 1-CCD suffer from poor video quality, whereas 3-CCD cameras produce much better quality videos. Most professional camcorders use the 3-CCD technology, thus making them more expensive than the other models.

The optical zoom feature of the camcorder lens generally ranges from 10X to 20X. The choice of zoom depends on how close you want to get to the action. Some digital video cameras also allow still photography at various resolutions, and some camcorders offer both video and still photography features. Some digital video camcorders have in-built flash for low-light photography, while some video cameras come with a 'Night Shot' feature. Other popular options include external flashlights, external microphones and external storage devices that can be attached onto the camcorder.

Camcorders with longer battery strength is also recommended. Digital video cameras have battery life ranging from 4 to 8 hours of continuous shooting. However, using the zoom or any external devices reduce the battery strength.

All cameras nowadays come bundled with a digital video editing software. But if you are not satisfied with the one provided, you can always buy a better and more expensive editing software from Adobe or any other reputable brand.

Video camera prices today vary from $500 to $4000, with Sony, JVC and Canon being the more popular brands.

Video Editing for Beginners

Getting started with video editing is very simple you only need a few items and you can be producing quality movies at home that you will be able to enjoy for many years to come. Maybe even produce a hit Hollywood movie.

The basic items you need are a video capture card, the software to edit, your computer, storage space on your computer and a camcorder, VCR, or you can display your movie on your computer screen.

The process is effortless, all you do is capture the video to you computer using a capture card, then edit your video with video editing software and then download the video that you edited to either tape or burn it to a VCD, CD, or DVD.

Let’s look at your computer first. You will need a minimum of a Pentium II 300 or faster, a minimum of 256 Megs of RAM, but you will get better performance with 512 Megs. You will also desire to have a 30GB drive that is split into 2 separate partitions. This means that you will have a C: and a D:. The C: should be given 10GB and will have all of your software stored there and the D: will be where your audio, video and editing projects are stored. Your graphics card should be a 32 Meg AGP. You can have an 8 or 16 Meg but the quality will not be as good.

Storage is probably the most confusing thing about video editing. Video makers have many choices for storing their digital video files and this is why it can be so confusing.

If you desire creating your own DVD’s then you are going to need lot of storage. The most you can get out of a single sided 4.7 GB DVD is around 2 hours of video. If you are using DV footage you are going to need 13GB per hour of video, this means you will need 26GB of storage and remember you always have extra footage that you need to factor that in as well so you are now up to 39GB of storage space needed. If you are adding other options such as graphics, MPEG2 footage for the DVD and the folder to hold it all then you are now up to 50GB. So, for your 2 hour movie you will need 50GB of space at least.

So, when you begin be sure that you have enough storage on your computer for the type of video that you wish to store.

On to the video capture card and the video editing software. When you first visit the electronics store you will find many manufacturers that create video capture cards. The most popular include

Some of the reputable video capture card manufacturers are: Pinnacle, Matrox, Dazzle, ADS, Canopus, and Digital Origin.

What video capture cards do to put it in simple terms is that these cards use hardware or software compression to digitize your video onto the hard drive on your computer. This way you can edit your video and play it back onto tape or display your movie on your computer screen.

Some times, you can purchase the video capture cards along with the video editing software that you choose. Some of the most popular video capture cards that are packaged with video software include the Pinnacle Pro One which comes with the Adobe Premiere 6 full version, TitleDeko RT, DV Tools 2.0, Hollywood FX, and Impressions DVD. The Dazzle DV NOW AV can be purchased along with the Premiere 6 full version and the DVDit LE.

Having music along with your video can also be accomplished with a MP3 Converter that will allow you to convert your MP3 music into a wav file or the format in which you need for your video. You may also wish to purchase a MP3 Encoder which will allow you to Wav or other formats into a MP3. A CD ripper is another item that you may wish to purchase that will help with converting your CD’s to MP3, WAV, WMA type files.

One other software program that will make you life easier when you begin video editing is a MPEG Encoder which is a very easy to use program that will make converting several formats easy than you can imagine. Many of these MPEG converters will aid in converting DVD, VCD, AVI, MPEG, GIF, Flash, WMV, WMA, WAV, MP3, MP4, M4A, OGG, AAC, 3GP and even more/

So, now all you need to do is to find the best video editing software that you feel comfortable with and off you go. You can find several different video editing software companies that offer their software on a trial basis, this will let you try out the software so you can see if it is the perfect software for you. But, remember with the trial version you will be receiving the video capture card. You will have to purchase it separately.