dacs.doc electric

LAST MONTH we had a presentation by MGI Software's Randall Whittle, who demonstrated two great programs, PhotoSuite III and VideoWave II (see Meeting Review by Wally David beginning on page 1). Since I recently bought a video capture board, I offered to review VideoWave II.

PhotoSuite III is a photo- and image-editing program not unlike PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro but much cheaper than either. You can get a special DACS price for it (see the offer in this issue of dacs.doc).

I got an older version of VideoWave free when I bought an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro video card (about $130 at Costco). Although it is now considered an "older" video card, it still has great features such as video in and out, an advanced television tuner, the ability to record television channels onto your hard drive (like a VCR), and support for high-resolution s-video. I was able to install the video card and software in about ten minutes, and start capturing video within about 20 minutes (after first moving my television and VCR closer to the computer).

I bought the card to help my niece produce a ten-minute video for her class. Oh well, I actually bought the card to update an older computer and her project was a good excuse to get a video capture card. The VideoWave software is simple to use and makes the most of icons and Help files. I was able to edit, title, and even add special effects to the movie without resorting to reading the manual. The only problem I had was selecting the "codec" or video compressor. I selected a complicated one, and it increased the time to create the movie considerably. I probably would have selected the right one if I had read the manual.

I have done some simple video work for Web sites at my company, DeMorgan. We use a professional-level product called Adobe Premier that is a lot more complicated to learn, costs considerably more, and takes a lot longer than VideoWave II. Sometimes a simpler and cheaper program is all you need. If you're a professional video producer, please don't send me hate mail--I know your $10,000 system is probably better than VideoWave II, but it is all I'll need at home for a while.

With any project, a little planning pays off. I asked the girls what they wanted to do from start to finish. We skipped making storyboards (hey, we're not George Lucas, and I'm no artist), and moved on to writing a list of scenes on a yellow pad. The girls spent time taping their own video work and selecting scenes from a tutorial tape their teacher gave them. We then captured the video using the ATI software into different scenes. Using VideoWave we imported the clips and then started building the movie. We added titles and credits, and then put the clips into the movie. After that, we added special effects such as fades, wipes, and other transitions. It took a while to create the final version, which was an ".avi" file, a compressed movie format created by Microsoft.

To get the movie back onto videotape we hooked the videotape recorder to the video output on the ATI videocard. Then we selected television output on the ATI card, and our Windows was output to my television so we could preview the results. Although the quality wasn't on par with a Star Wars film, it definitely got the girls an "A."

The requirements for VideoWave II are simple: Pentium 166, 32 megabytes of RAM, 2MB videocard, and about a gigabyte of free hard disk space (video work requires a lot of free space). I would recommend a faster computer, more RAM, and about a 2 or 3 gigabyte hard drive with lots of free space. You can get more information online at their Web site: www.mgisoft.com.

If you want to get a great image editor and a video editor, MGI is offering both for the price of most low-end image editors: $75. Take advantage of this special offer and help us thank our sponsors for traveling to Danbury to give our presentations.

I had a lot of fun playing with VideoWave II. It would take a lot of time to create a movie like the Blair Witch Project, but you can easily create your own professional-looking videotapes using VideoWave II and a capture card.