Want to make your own movie and send copies to friends and family? It's not that hard these days if you can get your hands on a video camera, a home computer and the right software.
A number of companies are making video editing software that can give home movies the look and feel of the real thing, with smooth, fade-to-black transitions and some special effects like music in the background. Burn a CD and the end result is your own movie.
Anyone who has sat through hours of other people's home videos knows the key is to keep these projects short. In his book, The Little Digital Video Book, Michael Rubin suggests people limit their filming to about 20 minutes, and from that, make a video around three or four minutes long.
Most people create highly personal videos, he says, and usually film so many hours that they never quite get around to editing it all and finishing a movie. Keep it simple until video editing and camera work becomes second-nature. Then go for the Blair Witch Project feature-length offering.
"People make video as a means to capture and preserve their world," says Dwight Jurling, of Ulead Systems Inc, a Taiwanese maker of video editing software. And for those on their Taiwan adventure, what better way to show people back home what the country looks like; its night markets, people doing tai-chi in the park, tea shops and mountains?
Ulead makes two different kinds of video editing software, one for the layman, VideoStudio 6, and one for professionals, MediaStudio Pro. The company competes with market leader, Adobe Systems Inc, and its Premier video-editing software.
According to Dan Weber, information technology manager for a group of local companies in Taipei, Adobe Premier is the cream of the crop in video editing software, but Ulead's VideoStudio 6 is the best choice for a beginner due to its ease-of-use.
Ulead developed an easy format that follows seven steps to editing a video. At the top of the screen, users will see the words Start, Capture, Storyboard, Effect, Overlay, Title, and finally, Finish, to carry the project to completion.
1. Start: Begin the project by deciding which format it will end up on, video CD, or DVD, and other settings that are not too confusing.
2. Capture: Hook the video camera to the proper slot on the back of the computer and download all the film. With Ulead software, the video will be captured in "clips," which are divided by every time the camera is started and stopped or paused during filming. Each stop will become a separate video clip.
3. Storyboard: Here is where the video "story" is created. Each clip will be shown on a large display board so the user can see exactly what order each scene happened and then move them around. Ulead made an easy drag-and-drop method of moving clips, using the mouse to click on a video clip, drag it to a different place in the order, and drop it in.
4. Effect: To add effects and make the video more movie-like, this section is where a person can make a fade-to-black transition between two clips, or fade from one scene to the next like on TV. This is also the section where light can be changed, a clip could be changed to black and white from color, and images can be blurred, among other functions.
5. Overlay: Video overlay can also add a bit of professionalism to a video. If a user is making a video of their basketball team, they might add a box in the corner for a commentator to explain what's going on in the scene.
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