Digital Video

How This Book Is Organized

Believe it or not, I did put some forethought into the organization of this book. I hope you find it logically arranged and easy to use. This book is divided into six major parts. The parts are described in the following sections.
Part I: Getting Ready for Digital Video

You may be wondering: just what is this whole digital video thing, anyway? Part I introduces you to digital video. I’ll show you what digital video is and what you can do with it. I’ll also show you how to get your computer ready to work with digital video, and I’ll help you choose a camcorder and other important moviemaking gear.

Part II: Gathering Footage

Editing video on your computer is just one part of the digital video experi-ence. Before you can do any editing, you need something to actually edit. Part II shows you how to shoot better video, and then I show you how to get that video into your computer — even if you don’t yet have a digital cam-corder, or you just have some footage on old VHS tapes that you want to use. I also help you record and import better audio because good audio is just as important as video when you’re making movies.

Part III: Editing Your Movie

Until just a few years ago, video editing was something that required professional-grade equipment, which cost in the hundreds of thousands of dol-lars. But with digital video and a semi-modern computer, editing video is now easy and very affordable. In Part III of this book, I’ll introduce you to the basics of editing. You’ll find out how to arrange scenes in the order you like and trim out the unwanted parts. I show you how to add cool transitions between video clips, use titles (text that appears onscreen), and top off your creation with sound effects, musical soundtracks, still graphics, and special effects.

Part IV: Sharing Your Video

When you’ve poured your heart into a movie project, you’ll definitely want to share it with others. This part helps you share your movies on the Internet or on videotape. You even find out how to make your own DVDs in this part.

Part V: The Part of Tens

I wouldn’t be able to call this a For Dummies book without a “Part of Tens” (really, it’s in my contract). Actually, the Part of Tens always serves an impor-tant purpose. In this book, it gives me a chance to show you ten cool tips and tricks for better moviemaking, as well as ten tools that will improve your movies and make your work easier. Because there are a lot of video-editing programs out there to choose from, I also provide a chapter that compares ten of them, feature by feature.

Part VI: Appendixes

The appendixes provide quick, handy references on several important sub-jects. First I show you how to use the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.Next up is a glossary to help you decrypt the alphabet soup of video-editing terms and acronyms. Additional appendixes help you install and update the editing programs shown throughout this book.
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