05/12/97 YOUR DIRECTOR'S CHAIR IS WAITING

YOUR DIRECTOR'S CHAIR IS WAITING
Pinnacle's Video-Director lets you edit those home movies and even add music
If you own a video camera and are like me, you probably have filled a lot of tapes. Odds are you rarely view any of them. It's not much fun to watch hours and hours of unedited tape, including those shots that did not come out right or, my own specialty, footage recorded because I forgot to turn off the camera.
Unfortunately, editing tapes is difficult and expensive. Even the arrival of PC-based editing in the past year or so hasn't helped much. Because uncompressed video fills hard disks at the horrifying rate of 1.1 gigabytes per minute, systems such as Avid Cinema for Macintosh or MGI VideoWave for Windows are better suited to preparing short clips than editing home movies.
SOLUTION. A clever new $300 product from Pinnacle Systems (888 484-3366), a maker of professional video gear, offers a solution. VideoDirector Studio 200 consists of Windows software, special cables, and a box about the size and shape of a modem. It lets a PC control a camcorder and a videocassette recorder.
To use the VideoDirector system, you pop the tape you want to edit into your camcorder, slip a blank tape into your VCR, and plug both into the control box. Another cable attaches the control box to a PC's printer port. A third link runs from the PC to both the camcorder's control connector (it works with virtually all current cameras) and a special infrared device that works like a remote to control the VCR. It's a bit complicated to set up the first time, but Pinnacle's good diagrams help.
To edit a tape, you start by dividing it into scenes. VideoDirector can do this automatically by guessing at where the scene changes occur, but I found that it chopped the tape into too many short takes. It's simple to select the scenes by hand by clicking to mark the beginning and end points as you watch the tape on your TV or a little window on your PC display. For higher accuracy, you can watch in slow motion or jog through single frames. This is VideoDirector's secret: Your PC records only the start and end of scenes, not the actual video, so you don't need a superhigh-powered computer with many gigabytes of disk space.
When your clips are marked, it's time to assemble a finished tape. You choose your scenes and drag them to a storyboard in the order you want them recorded. Then you can apply fades, wipes, or dissolves as transitions between scenes, and add titles and music or other sounds. Once the elements are all in place, VideoDirector copies the scenes, keeping them in the right order and with titles and effects added, from your camcorder to the tape in your VCR.
ORNERY VIDEOS. Learning to use VideoDirector isn't as easy as I would like. Part of the problem is that video editing is an art that takes time to master. Also, Pinnacle's documentation could be clearer. But the biggest problem is the orneriness of VCRs. Getting a recorder to work with the system is frustrating. And VCRs are hard to control precisely. Although VideoDirector tries to compensate for the delays your VCR experiences when it starts and stops, you can still wind up with video hiccups between scenes. I found that using a fade technique made for smoother transitions.
Video editing will become easier when more affordable digital cameras and recorders hit the market in the next few years. For now, Video-Director is the first practical, low-cost tool for turning all those piles of unwatched video tapes into the family treasures troves they were meant to be.
BY STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM