When I bought my powerful new iMac, I had one task in mind: editing old home movies. Most are on ancient VHS tapes, needing to be digitized. Some digitizing devices, including One Touch Video Capture from Diamond Multimedia, which I bought online, cost less than $50. As I've explained in earlier columns, they work as a bridge between a VHS player and a Windows PC or Mac. Most people, though, have movie cameras or smartphones with movies that already are digitized, which takes me to the next step: editing those precious moments.
Over the course of three weeks, I edited the same 5-minute clip in three video-editing programs for both Windows and Mac (I run them side-by-side on my iMac, with the help of Parallels). Two stand out:
First off, iMovie, which is free with any model of Mac, is all an auteur could ask for. It handles most of the basic tasks, such as adding sound tracks, using transitions and inserting titles. Pinnacle Studio, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve. But for power and features, I prefer Adobe Premiere Elements. Amazon.com was having a flash sale of 50 percent off for Premiere Elements; its regular price is $90, still a bargain for third-party video-editing software. It has some impressive features, one of which I used right away. Since many of my clips focus on a single event _ my daughter's first steps, for example, I could divide my screen and run three scenes of her rambling along at the same time. Then I added a sound track I found online that featured a tuba making funny sounds as she fell on her bottom.
I grew up with movies. My late father took me to every John Ford and John Houston movie ever made. Others in the audience would shush him as he explained artful camera work, precise editing, natural dialog and ways to integrate back stories. I was 5 when we watched Houston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and 8 when we watched "The Quiet Man," Ford's masterpiece. At one time, I worked as a movie critic _ I'd watch five movies a week and was usually disappointed, as my father might be, at the sloppiness of some directors' techniques. In college, a film class I took started with an analysis of Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," in my opinion the finest silent movie ever made. Our textbook showed the master with dozens of film clips around his neck that he then edited into a movie so precise and stunning I still watch it at least once a year. The version with the haunting soundtrack by Dmitri Shostakovich is the one to watch.
Film editing basically hasn't changed since the early days of Eisenstein. Movie footage is sorted, scenes are cut, and other scenes advance the story, which means editing must be precise. These days, the actual editing is done on high-powered Macs, where scenes can be cut, sound added or deleted, titles inserted, and transitions used unobtrusively. The mark of an amateur is a film with gaudy titles, flashy fade-ins and an absent storyline.
How difficult is all this? I try to imagine a real novice tackling video editing and I realize that the process can be intimidating. However, most movie-editing programs share several things. Movie clips are imported from a camera, phone, or hard drive, organized into logical sequences, and dragged and dropped onto a story line. The footage can be watched in a window on a PC's desktop and editing can continue as the movie progresses. I spent more than two hours editing a five-minute clip of one of my kids. The film got uploaded to Facebook, to their _ and their friends' _ delight.
All three of the programs I tried have four video and audio tracks. That means I could create the basic audio and video on one double-track, add a sound effect to the third audio track, and music to the fourth.
A novice to any of the programs will need to turn to help files and tutorials. Apple has dedicated tech support agents for its apps such as iMovie. I called twice and was favorably impressed with their level of competence and patience. Pinnacle uses email or chat, both of which are pretty much useless, since the techs can't see what's on a caller's screen. Adobe Premiere Elements has an excellent collection of how-to's on its website (adobe.com) that assume new users haven't had any experience with film editing. Adobe support was closed on the Sunday I tried to contact them. All three have dozens of tutorials on YouTube.
If money is a consideration, and you're using a Mac, the free iMovie will do just fine for most beginners. If you have $80 to spend, go for Adobe Premiere Elements, for either Windows or Mac. It's often bundled with Adobe's excellent photo-editing software, Photoshop Elements, for about $150. Version 15 of Elements Premiere is a polished program that will help aspiring auteurs learn the basics and soar from there. I can't recommend version 21 of my once-favorite Pinnacle Studio. It crashed way too many times, often at the worst moments. And to use it, you'll need a computer with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. A quad-core processor wouldn't hurt, either.
Whichever program you choose, go easy on the flashy transitions and titles. Those who overdo it with effects are bound to stay amateurs.
