Bridging the Digital Divide
Just five years ago digital video systems were as exotic as pet ocelots: rare, expensive and dicey to handle; but today they're everywhere. At the most recent Videomaker Expo, everyone was talking, teaching, touting, trying, selling, buying digital. There was almost a stampede feel about it: "Digital's coming, digital's coming! Run and tell the king!"
Can you believe the buzz then? Is it time to pack your VHS camcorder away with that old Kodak movie camera?
As usual, it depends --depends on what equipment you're using now, how your future needs may evolve, and how much you want to spend (in stress as well as cash). There is now no doubt, whatever that the future of consumer video is all-digital. The uncertainties lie in questions like: do you want to go there? And if so, how soon and by what route? To help answer those questions, we'll look at the pros and cons of several different upgrade paths toward the goal of an all-digital video editing system.
The Whole Package
The easiest (if most expensive) path is not an upgrade at all, but a brand-new system. If you have no video production equipment as yet, or if you want to swap a modest outfit for a top-drawer system, it's best to start right from scratch.
- For acquisition, choose a DV camcorder that has a FireWire port (a few models still lack this essential feature). Besides superior image quality, if you start with the DV camcorder, you can begin archiving digitally right now.
- Select a FireWire capture card, considering its bundled editing software as well as its performance and price statistics.
- Gulp hard and agree to dedicate and configure a computer solely for video editing.
- Or, save yourself a migrane and buy a ready-to-edit turnkey system. These come in two varieties: a computer-based setup like Sony's VAIO or Apple's G3, or a stand-alone device like DraCo's Casablanca DV.
- For saving your edited programs, you could add a DV VCR, but unless you're into professional production, you'll probably use the corder half of your camcorder to archive your finished program.
Can You Get There from Here?
If you're already using a complete analog system --camcorder, edit controller, editing deck, titler, etc, the best method is still to convert completely; but if your not ready for that, you can also upgrade in increments.
If you have a high-quality analog camcorder, you may wish to continue analog acquisition for the foreseeable future. In that case, begin by digitizing your video for nonlinear post production. Go with a computer equipped with a capture card, which digitizes analog footage on the way into the computer and converts it to analog on the way back out.
If you're keeping your analog camcorder out of love rather than thrift, you may wish to set up your analog post system to output to a digital VCR for archiving. (If archiving is your only use for the digital VCR, however, it may be more practical to spend the money instead on a digital daughter for your noble old camcorder. You can always output to the DV camcorder itself.)
The Trailhead: Get a DV Camcorder
If you want to postpone some of the expense, start with just the DV camcorder and edit (from the analog outputs) to a standard VCR. The results will be about what you'd expect from a good quality analog system. On the one hand, you won't immediately see any of the advantages of digital; but on the other hand, you're all set to complete the transition when you're ready to spring for the digital editing system.
Could you start with the computer first and use your existing analog camcorder for a while? Sure, but it's probably not cost-effective. Only a couple DV capture cards are capable of also capturing an analog signal. Chances are your nearly-new analog capture card would eventually have to be replaced with a FireWire card when you made the move to a DV camcorder.
Note that if you plan to buy a digital camcorder before investing in a digital post system with FireWire, it's especially important to select a model with analog video and audio inputs (not all have them). That way, you can archive your new programs in (and convert old ones to) digital.
If You Have a Digital Camcorder
Now suppose you've already bought your digital camcorder, adding it to an analog post production system. You have two options.
- Simply continue linear analog post as before, using your DV camcorder's analog outputs (while feeding the piggy bank toward completing the digital conversion).
- If you already have the resources, go the whole nine yards by replacing your current system with a new nonlinear system.
If you're skittish because of the horror stories you've heard about making computers and video work right (and they're true, you know--at least some of the time), you might opt for a stand-alone turnkey system that comes equipped with a FireWire port. Units from manufacturers like Casablanca and Applied Magic will let you start cranking pure digital without mussing a hair. (Keep in mind, though, that stand-alone systems only edit video. Don't think about playing Doom or balancing your checkbook with one of these. You can't.)
To make computer-based nonlinear more appealing, Apple, Sony, Pinnacle Systems and other vendors are offering turnkey computer systems equipped and fully preconfigured for video editing.
Note: You should always check for reports of incompatibilities between various camcorders and various editing systems before buying. Some cards and camcorders simply do not work well together.
If You Have Nonlinear Editing Gear
Many people are already feeling the joys and sorrows of nonlinear post production. If you are now doing nonlinear editing, the next step is to add both a digital camcorder and a FireWire input card.
FireWire cards are not all that expensive, if you already have a computer system; and if you already have digital post in place, you'll want to realize the improvement in picture and sound quality obtainable only through wall-to-wall digital.
Where Do You Want to go Today?
In studying these upgrade paths, you can see that the three phases of production fall into a rough hierarchy of importance:
- Digital acquisition (i.e. shooting with a digital camcorder) improves program quality and adds time code, but you won't see all that much improvement as long as post production stays analog. Also, the finest prosumer analog camcorders capture footage that is arguably as good as digital.
- Digital post production offers dramatic capabilities, many of which are not available for analog editing.
- Digital archiving (long-term storage) is the least noticed and most vital improvement that you can make in your system.
Again, if you start down the upgrade path by buying a DV camcorder that includes analog inputs, you can cover acquisition and archiving all at once with a single investment.
The bottom line? Unless you're like the writer who'll never exchange her legal pads and yellow hexagonal #2 Dixon Ticonderoga brand pencils for word processing, not never, no nohow, you'll be going digital sooner or later. The only questions you'll have to answer are, when and via which upgrade path?
The Digital Difference
Digital video signals are also recorded as magnetized particles and they too fade gradually away. So how come digital video is all the rage?
Because it can be copied without noticeable loss. Leave a digital tape for 20 years and it too will wither like an apple forgotten in a cupboard; but dupe it every three to five years, and you can keep perfect sound and image quality indefinitely. Maintaining original quality indefinitely: that, friends, is archiving.
But if you wait five years to dupe an original, won't there be some signal loss? The answer is yes, but in digital systems, signal loss and quality loss are not synonymous.
In analog recording, information is encoded as complex and subtle variations of the signal itself, so any signal loss degrades that information. Digital recording, however, encodes information as numbers that are merely carried by the signal as on/off power pulses. All a digital processing device like a DVD player needs is enough signal to make out whether it's there (code 1) or not (code 0).
We can show this concept on the printed page. Typically, we would write the numerical quantity "three hundred sixty two" as
362
but if this page got left out in the rain for a few years, the number might degenerate until it looked like this:
RVers like me demonstrate this all the time. When I set up my DSS digital dish at campgrounds around the country, the signal strength may vary from 94+ down to the low eighties; but the picture quality looks absolutely identical, regardless of signal quality. As long as the receiver can decipher the digital signal, it can reconstruct a perfect picture, no matter how poor the raw material may be.
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