Hey guys. This is my first post and I have a few questions. In the past I have been an actor in theatre but I would really like to merge over to filmmaking. Somthing like directing, cinematography, or just producing independent films. I am looking into purchasing a camera and have decided on a DV. I have a fairly new computer...XP, 256 ram, pentium 4. How can I tell if it will be able to edit the video I shoot? How do I know if will be compatable with firewire? What camera should I purchase?
Thanks!
Ed.
Ed.
Basically, with any fairly new computer you need two things for a decent DV editing system : a standard firewire port (many PCs, like mine, have them built into the motherboard) and a second hard drive dedicated to video use. You may get away with just one hard drive, but putting all the video files onto a dedicated drive makes things a lot easier since you get the full performance of that drive and don't have to share it with programs, swap file, etc. Another 256MB of RAM may help too, but 256MB is probably enough (I did edit a DV feature with 256MB on Win98, but XP uses more).
After that, you need a program like Adobe Premiere or Avid Xpress DV to edit the footage. Both should work with any standard-compatible Firewire port (OHCI? I forget the abbreviation, but almost any card these days should meet it).
