Start with your computer

In order to properly do video editing, you'll need to make sure that your computer is up to the job. Make sure it has at least as much processing power and ram as the software manufacturer recommends.

When buying a new computer, make sure that it has more than the amount of processing power and ram you need for your chosen editing software. This is because these programs are getting more demanding of your computer with the rise of the high definition videoproduction.

From a video production company standpoint, I recommend purchasing multiple internal hard drives or external fire wire drives to only be used for editing. Make sure all of your hard drives are larger than you expect you'll need. A 1-terabyte internal drive for your software and a 2-terabyte internal or external fire wire drive for editing is recommended. They should also be fast enough (7200 rpm) for video editing.

Make sure that your new computer can accept a fire wire or IEEE 1394 cable, as this is how you'll connect your camera or digital video recorder for inputting and outputting your video production.

Make sure that the editing drive, and all drives for that matter, have at least 10% free space on it. A hard drive needs room to move the enormous amount of data around. Run a disc utility to optimize your computer's hard drive. It needs to be in tiptop shape to work efficiently and properly.

Professional video production companies make sure to protect their computers by installing current anti-virus software, not installing unneeded programs and uninstalling unused or suspicious programs. Make sure that these 'suspicious' programs aren't needed by your computer to function before uninstalling.

Organizing your footage

You also need to have an understanding of where your footage is and which are the best shots. One way is to digitize all of the footage and make a paper or digital log of where everything is. Separate our cutaway footage, best takes, and anything else from production.

If you don't want to digitize everything, you can convert your files to DVD and watch them on a television monitor. You may, like a video production company, have a committee to work with who will be deciding which shots to use. Let’s say you are working with a Chicago production company. They may deal with a range of clients from a family reunion, up to corporate law firms. It's much more professional to show footage on a television monitor than it is to crowd around a computer. Whatever you do, if you're using tape to record your shots, don't watch the tape. The tape is precious. Having it break or get jammed in the camera or VCR before you've had a chance to digitize the footage would be a very bad thing indeed.

If you transfer the footage to DVD, you can display the time code on the DVD, so you'll know exactly where on the tape your best shots are. When you digitize the footage, the time code from the tape is included. So if you know what time code numbers to look for, it will speed up the digital video editing process.

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