The Language Teacher
September 2003

TLT Wired
Video Bytes

Paul Daniels

In this issue, Paul will review software and hardware needed to begin video editing on a computer. In his next column, he will introduce activities and ideas on using video in the classroom.
As well as our feature columns, we would also like to answer reader queries. If you have a question, problem, or idea you'd like discussed in this column, please write to tlt-wired@jalt-publications.org. Also, visit us at our web address jalt-publications.org/tlt/wired/.

--Malcolm Swanson & Paul Daniels

Video Bytes

Once only available to professional movie producers, video production equipment and software is now affordable for schools. Ask your technical support center if digital media equipment is available. I recently discovered that our school has dozens of digital video cameras for teacher and student use as well as multimedia computers for video editing. Even if your school does not have equipment, you can easily gather the right tools to start producing your own videos on a single computer. Video editing can be accomplished using a desktop or laptop computer connected to an analog video camera.

Video Cameras

If you want to capture quality video, use a digital video camera. Since I have only owned and used one digital video camera, I cannot provide information on various brands. I can say that I have been using my passport-sized Sony DV PC10 for 5 years without a glitch. It takes excellent quality video and is both rugged and compact. It has been with me to mountain peaks and ocean floors (in a case). Video editing software works smoothly with my Sony digital camera. If you do not have access to a digital video camera or you are not ready to purchase one just yet, you can easily use an older SVHS or Hi-8 video camera to capture video digitally and edit it on a computer. In this case, the quality of video may not be as good as the video captured from a DV camera, but it is satisfactory for most purposes.

Computers

You will need something fairly new and quick if you want to edit video. I recommend at least a 1 GHz CPU and 512 MB of memory. A SCSI hard drive will be quicker, but a standard IDE hard drive will work fine. With the disk storage prices dropping rapidly, you should invest in a second hard drive, a large one! Each hour of raw DV footage takes up 13GB. A 100 GB hard drive should suffice. Install your video editing software on the same hard drive as the operating system and use your second hard drive as a scratch disk for capturing and saving video. For quicker data transfer between drives, do not have the two drives sharing the same IDE slot on your motherboard. One hard drive can be plugged into IDE 1 and the other into IDE 2.

Analogue Capture Hardware

If you are using an analogue video camera you will need an analogue capture device with an S-video jack. You can use an external video capture device attached via a USB cable or an internal PCI or AGP card. See www.dvdrhelp.com/capturecards for a list of capture cards and compatibility comments posted by users. You may want to consider choosing a capture card that is bundled with video editing software. Check that your computer, operating system, capture card, videoediting software and camera are compatible with one another. Decide what video editing software you want to use first, then check what capture cards are supported by the card and that your computer has enough memory to run the software.

Digital Capture Hardware

If you are using a digital video camera, things get much easier. Connect the DV camera to the computer via the IEEE-1394 serial bus, also called i-Link or FireWire. Visit www.1394ta.org for more information on IEEE. Multimedia computers often have IEEE-1394 built into them. If not, it is very inexpensive to add. I picked up a Buffalo IEEE PCI card for my computer for ¥3000. An IEEE PC card for a notebook will be a bit more. Make sure the card is supported by your operating system. When purchasing computer hardware, brands made in Taiwan or the USA are usually a good bet for compatibility with English operating systems. I have had very good luck with Buffalo products. I have found at times that hardware made in Japan will work only on Japanese operating systems.

Video Editing Software

The choice of video editing software depends on how demanding your editing needs are and how you would like to deliver your video content. You may want to export your video back onto a VHS tape to show in the classroom on a TV screen, or distribute video on CDs or DVDs for students to take home. Perhaps you want to stream your video content over a network so students can access it from their own computers. Start with something simple and inexpensive. If you are a Macintosh user, try Apple's free iMovie or Apple's US$300 Final Cut Express. It supports capturing directly from most DV cameras and non-DV cameras if using an analog to DV converter. For Windows users, try Windows Movie Maker, bundled with Windows XP, to get a feel for video editing. A while back Sony offered a fairly complete video editing package free of charge called Screenblast Video Factory, but all I could find on their website now is a US$69 package called Movie Studio. Another inexpensive and easy to use application is Ulead VideoStudio (US$90). This software simplifies the entire process of capturing, editing and saving video to a DVD disk. If you think you are going to be doing more demanding video editing and want something more professional, consider Adobe Premiere, which, for around US$500 will take care of most professional editing needs.

Video Extension	Video Name	Developer
AVI	Audio/Video Interleave	Microsoft
MPG, MPEG, M1V, MP2, MP3, MPA, MPE, MPV2	Moving Pictures Experts Group	The MPEG working group
RM, RA, RAM	RealAudio/RealVideo	RealNetworks
ASF, WMA, WMV	Windows Media	Microsoft
IVF	Intel Video Technology	Ligos
VIV	Vivo Video	VivoActive
MOV	QuickTime	Apple

The Language TeacherSeptember 2003

TLT WiredVideo Bytes