A Dabbler’s Guide to Computer Video

Many people think computer video is still too scary, with visions of SCSI drives, codecs and frame rates dancing in their heads. To many people, computer video just seems like too much work. Even if you aren't ready for full-blown nonlinear editing, there are still plenty of fun, easy ways you can use your computer to enhance your videos; and these applications do not require powerful state-of-the-art computers to run them. From organizing your productions with scripts and storyboards to using your computer to control your VCRs for linear editing setup, take a look into our beginner's bag of tricks.

Scripting it Out
Scripts and storyboards are two helpful planning tools that are easy to produce on any computer. A script uses words to describe the visual portion of the finished video, and the accompanying dialog. A storyboard is a visual depiction of how the finished video will look, with major scenes roughly sketched in and notes about the type of camera angles and edits.

You can create scripts with a word processor but specialized software is more efficient. Much of a scriptwriter's time is involved with repetitive tasks, like changing margins and indentations or typing in frequently used scene descriptions and character names. A screenwriting program automates these tasks, reducing the number of keystrokes…