NLE

Video editing is simply when you record ( copy ) one video to another. Using a video camera to copy your footage to another tape is also video editing, but there are several ways you can do it, and which ever way it is done, its always video editing.

Option 1. You can simply connect your camera to a VCR press play on the camera, record on the VCR and when the tape is finished then the editing is done. This is not a very neat way to do it, as I'm sure one time or another you forgot your camera on, and filming your shoes while you walk. If you use this technique to edit your footage these unwanted shots will also be transfered to the edited tape, I'm sure it would be boring to sit and watch this kind of footage. So a more time consuming editing process is necessary.

Option 2 is to pause your recording and fast forward your camera upto the next scene. Like this your finished product will be much more presentable then option 1, but still, mastering these transistions could proove difficult. What if you want to mix one scene onto another, repeat a funny bit in slow motion, or add a four second shot? For this, I present to you non-linear editing.

Option 3. So far there are two ways ( that I know of ) to do this. One is purchasing a purposely made VCR deck which has a computer processor inside including the necessary software for non-linear editing. I know of only one company doing these decks called Casablanca. These decks are specially good for people who have no idea of what computers are, or how to use them. The second way to perform non-linear editing is using a computer. Be it PC or Mac. But as PCs' are the worlds most popular computers, why not join the crowd and perform non-linear editing on the same computer you are used to when writing your letters or doing your accounts.

To start with, you need a modern PC, a Pentium 133 minimum if you are aiming to capture full quality video. The faster the PC the faster it takes to finish your edited video ( the rendering process). But this is not all. You also need a fast hard disk, SCSI or UDMA but as SCSI is quite expensive and not ready necessary for DV / S-VHS / VHS work, I will not condider it here. So , does your hardware support Ultra DMA/33? In order to test whether you have UDMA support on your hardware try the following:-