ok i am as new as they come. i have started a club in my school and we are going to make short films. we are planning on buying a canon xl1. i was just wondering how would you edit the film. do you just need a firewire or whatever, or do you need some sort of converter to get it on the computer
THANKS
I wuldn't recomend starting with a camera like tht ( a simple 500 doller camercorder would do the exact same thing when your a total beginner)
You need a wire to put it on your computer, a recording program on your computer, Sony Vegas would be the best if you have a PC, and I'm guessing Final Cut for Mac. Those programs can also edit the film and put music/sound effects in. There are thousands of diffrent programs that do diffrent stuff to your film and your gonna find out about them as soon as you need them.
A lot of computers have Firewire built in these days, otherwise a Firewire PCI card should only cost a few bucks; a cable may cost more than the card if you buy it from a big store!
Then you just plug the cable into the camera and computer, and run the editing software to capture the video from tape. I'm not sure what's good out of the various cheap editing packages these days, but there are plenty around; I used to use Adobe Premiere, which did everything competently but nothing especially well.