Adobe <Product Name> Elements = a crappy copy of the real version
for software, it really depends on your technical skill and how technical you want to get. btw, if you are going to be doing a lot of editing, you should get a high end computer to handle the amount of processing power required to edit in realtime without horrible lag. if you are running windows vista, save yourself some pain and put a bullet in your head because that will be slow no matter what kind of hardware you put it on. also, if you are doing this on a laptop it will be painful. if you are considering using the built-in hard drive on your laptop for video editing... well, you will be crying very shortly after working on the editing.
things you need:
- a lot of hard drive space. one minute is about 1 GB because it's decompressed so you can actually edit it.
- high speed drives, get them if you can. 10,000RPMs is your basic high speed drive that you should use separately, and not put your OS on it because windows access the drive all the time.
- RAM... lots of RAM. a couple GBs of decent DDR2 RAM will be good.
- lots of time. it takes about an hour for each minute of video. dont believe me? ask anyone that has done non-linear video editing before.
- a firewire card/connection. last i checked (which was a while ago), using your computer to control the camera playback and video transfer can only be done via firewire.
Adobe Premiere is an excellent program but it's a professional product and takes a lot of time to learn to use properly.
how do i know all this? i worked as a tech at a "multimedia lab" where the computers were only used for photoshop, premier, illustrator and apple's video editing app.
however, if you are just going to be some dumbass that dances around like an idiot and slaps it up on youtube, chances are your editing requirements will be non-existent.
"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2007 12:33AM by Gravis.