One of the best digital nonlinear editing systems for film
editing is the AVID, but a decent system will probably cost
about $50,000+. This is nowhere close to the cost of a video
toaster.
A less expensive option is to build your own system using a
MAC platform with a software program, such as Adobe Premiere.
Such a system could be build for about $10,000. You would
need a PowerMAC 8100 AV with 32 MB of RAM and a 500 MB internal
hard drive, costing about $5,000. You also need an external
AV hard drive with at least 2 GB of memory to edit a 20 minute
movie (about $1,500) or 9 GB of memory to edit a feature film
(about $5,000). You also need a video capturing card to digitize
a video dub of your film with SMPTE time code and burn-in
film code numbers (assuming that you already have a videotape
player/recorder that uses time code), such as Radius VideoVision
Studio (about $3,000). Then you will also need an audio capturing
card and perhaps audio editing software, if you want EQ control
since Adobe Premiere allows you to edit 99 different sound tracks
but it doesn't allow you to control equalization, only volume (about
$1,000). You need Adobe Premiere 4.0, which is native for the
PowerMAC (about $300 for educational market). Finally, you need
two monitors, which the PowerMAC AV supports, to be able to view
all the editing windows comfortably at once on two screens.
Now, you need to record your sound with SMPTE time code that matches
the time code appearing digitally on the clap stick during film
recording, so that you can sync the sound and picture during
editing. Provided you have used the correct frame rates you can
write down the film code for film conforming or you can use
Adobe Premiere to put your EDL, edit decision list, on disk
for on-line editing of yourfilm, using the original videotape
that you digitized. Such as system is currently being used by
Jonathan Hamilton, one of my former students, to edit narrative
films shot on Super 16 for Davenport Films in Delaplane,Virginia.
I hope that this is helpful. You might try to contact Jonathan
for more details and an update on how well the system works.
Jonathan recently did a workshop on digital nonlinear editing
for the Southeast Media Institute in Columbia, SC.
Good luck, Hap Kindem UNC-CH [log in to unmask]
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