Until about 5 years ago, unless you had access to professional facilities or a few thousand dollars to spare, the only way you could edit or dub your vacation videos was to connect two VCRs and be fairly adept with a remote, or else risk losing that unforgettable shot of Junior launching a spitball into the Grand Canyon. The explosion of relatively affordable digital video hardware has had an unprecedented impact on home moviemaking, imprinting our memories on our desktops and compressing them for friends and family to view over the Internet.
DV was first unleashed in 1994 by a conglomerate of more than 50 industry titans including Sony and Panasonic. It created a sensation in the professional world because of the significant advantages it had over analog video. By the end of the decade, hardware prices had plunged to the point that the general public could afford to manipulate video in ways formerly closed to those outside the broadcast and film industries.
Digital video improves on analog in many ways. The images are more vivid with vibrant, authentic colors that make the quality equal to that of broadcast video. The hardware is more compact than a standard camcorder with pocket-sized DV cameras on the market. The hardware includes error-correction technology that makes it more reliable. Also, DV can be downloaded to one's desktop with little or no reduction in quality in the uncompressed format.
The secret to the ease of sending DV to a computer lies in the seamless conversion of analog signals to pixels, two-dimensional units of the red, green and blue color spectrum. The seamlessness lies in temporal compression, which increases the redundancy between analog frames by encoding just the differences between frames. DV can originate from a variety of sources, such as specialized video cameras, external capture hardware and internal TV cards.
Among the most innovative DV cameras are the ones manufactured by Sony and Hitachi. The Sony MD Discam is the first of its kind to allow videos to be saved directly to a 650 MB MiniDisc. Instead of putting wear and tear on the recording medium by constant rewinding to locate certain points on the tape, users can access material immediately with the ease of locating files on a computer CD-ROM. Clips can be rearranged and subjected to minor editing before being transferred to the computer.
Hitachi's M-2 is the first DV camera to capture in the MPEG-1 format, which eliminates the need to spend hundreds of dollars on high-capacity hard drives to accommodate multi-gigabyte video files. It sports a hard disk that can store up to two hours of VHS-quality video and a macro component that allows for extreme close-ups from as little as three inches away. It can also connect to a VCR or TV for transmission of audio/visual signals.
Despite the high-tech features offered by these models, Donna Beadle, a public relations representative for Best Buy, said that consumers in general have less lofty goals in mind when shopping for a DV camera.
\Customers are mostly looking for a good price, good clear video, digital spills and a brand name,"" Beadle said.
UW students like Communication Arts TA Jacquelyn Vinson cite the benefits of DV cameras for amateur videographers looking for an economical way to complete classroom projects and preserve memories.
""It makes feature film and documentary production so much more accessible to many people,"" Vinson said.
Because even the most basic models are still in the $500 price range, many consumers opt for USB-based hardware made by such companies as Dazzle Multimedia which retails from as little as $50 for a simple video-only to PC transfer device to $300 for the high-powered Video Creator II editing suite.
However, even the middle-of-the-road models such as the original Digital Video Creator are remarkably easy to use while offering features helpful to both the novice and the advanced videographer.
The compression process it uses is dramatically more efficient than that employed by other conversion programs. Instead of converting the clip frame by frame, Dazzle splits it up into 100 sections creating a seamless video file in 4 hours or less (depending on output quality) compared to 10 hours or more with other programs. Capturing and splicing together miniscule clips consisting of as little as a half second each is a breeze due to its user-friendly clipboard feature.
The Dazzle and similar editing suites have met with a mixed reception from UW student videographers. For example, skeptical individuals like junior Luke Pebler are less than thrilled with some manufacturers.
""A lot of video editing software is either under-powered or too hard to use. For example, Adobe Premiere is less than intuitive,"" Pebler said, adding that he found the online help unimpressive.
Those looking to save even more money by purchasing an internal TV tuner (under $100) should keep in mind that the technology behind these devices has not progressed much since their inception in the late 1990s. Foremost among the shortcomings of TV tuners are the picture controls.
Some users have been frustrated by the fact that if one control has been calibrated properly with the TV image and the control next to it is adjusted, the first adjustment is undone. Even when the live window on the desktop is displaying an acceptable image, the capture file will often appear grainy.
One of the more expensive makes, ATI's All-in-Wonder, uses high-quality MPEG technology to eliminate this problem, but older versions still have the potential to annoy some users by completely replacing the video card, making it unusable for anything besides captures. Also, not everyone is eager to open up their computer and install a new device.
What does the future hold for digital video? According to Beadle, the continuing improvement in technology will carry DV technology along with it.
""In keeping with current trends in consumer electronics, we can expect to see smaller units that are easier to use,"" she said.
While digital video devices are currently not the norm, the next few years should bring higher-quality devices at more affordable prices. Eventually, everyone will be able to create their own digital movies.
