Making Movies with NT

The inhouse creation of video used to be the private realm of specialized studios. Now, video creation is following the growth patterns of desktop publishing and desktop graphics. Studios used to do all the video editing with tape decks and splicing, but now the process is digital. When video editing first became a digital process, the Macintosh was the platform of choice. Thus, the Mac was the foundation for all the development of powerful desktop video editing software.

The Mac OS continues to dominate the market, but advances in operating systems for Intel-based PCs are turning the tide. Windows NT 4.0 is spurring the PC's acceptance in the video editing market as more people discover that NT is stable, powerful, and can grow as demand increases. The true multitasking and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) functions available in NT also allow significant performance gains.

Motion picture and TV studio systems might stick with the Mac because of inertia. However, as corporate systems perform more video editing, these systems will probably be NT based. With NT 5.0, the addition of multiple monitor capabilities and extended driver support will strengthen NT's position.

Linear and Nonlinear Editing
The two kinds of video editing are linear and nonlinear. With linear editing, you record each piece of video and audio in sequential order. A crude example of linear editing is to connect two VCRs and tape from one to the other. You play a segment of your original tape on one VCR and record it on the other. When you get to the end of the segment, you stop recording and change the tape in the source VCR. You then play and record a segment of the next tape that is in the source VCR.

Nonlinear editing is the more popular type of editing because it is flexible. You don't need to worry about the order in which you record the video and audio because you can manipulate each segment independently and move it along a time line. After you have massaged all the segments, generated the titles and effects, and perfected the sequences, you can record the final video either digitally or onto a tape.

You prepare video with a five-step process.

1. Capture the subject via videotape or film.
2. Transfer the raw image to hard disks for editing.
3. Edit the material.
4. Add graphics and effects.
5. Format for a medium (i.e., TV, CD-ROM, or Internet video).

You also need to consider cost. The video industry has a saying about video production: You can get it fast, you can get high quality, or you can get it cheap--but you can have only two out of three. I have seen staggering price quotes for productions, and I now understand why movies are so expensive to produce.

However, I wanted to create a way to turn out videos quickly and efficiently, get great quality, and save money. To meet these goals, I had to bring as much video production inhouse as I could afford.

One of my projects is to produce a videotape demonstration of Windows NT Magazine's Windows NT Solutions Directory (http://www.winntsolutions.com). Because the video will be used on the Internet and in other ways, I needed top-quality and high-performance editing and production at a reasonable cost.

First, I had to decide how to edit the video. The standard method is to use a Macintosh running Avid Technology software. Avid Technology controls about 95 percent of the digital video editing systems in the studio environment, and nearly all these systems are Macintoshes.

But I'm an NT guy, so I needed a way to do this project with NT. I found several choices in the rapidly changing landscape of products. Because the NT digital video editing market is new, not all devices are compatible, nor can software compatibility be guaranteed. New digital video products enter the market every day, and each company has its own approach to compatibility. With this dynamic market in mind, I knew that good technical support, demonstrated performance, and reliability were critical.

Editing Software
I found about a dozen video editing packages for Windows 95 or NT. On the low end of the video editing software spectrum, inexpensive packages provide basic editing capabilities but also have limitations that drive a professional editor crazy. An example is Corel Lumiere, which cannot import files larger than 500MB. This file size seems large, but it is only about 45 seconds of uncompressed video. You can import as many 500MB-or-less files as you want, but the size limitation is a hassle.

One large step up, Adobe Premiere, from Adobe Systems, has the largest market share, with equivalent products on NT and the Mac. This product is easy to use and flexible, and has more plugins than any other product. Adobe Premiere is fast and works with more capture cards and operating systems than any other program I found.