by John Storey

So, the new baby was on it’s way, and we decided to do the ‘parent’ thing and get a camcorder. I have been taking still pictures for many years, and have never seen a good use for a camcorder - what do you film? How do you edit it? How do you get people to watch the finished result? It seems that there is no substitute for a photograph! Came the happy day of our new arrival. Tenderly we examined it, it was so tiny! We felt the smooth contours of the new unblemished surface, and even discovered that it had a little knob! Yes, the new camcorder was a fine gadget! Despite my earlier misgivings I eagerly charged the battery, popped in a tape and began recording. Soon I discovered the delights of forgetting to turn it off, and consequently acquired miles of footage. Yes, footage. Those shots you get from unusual angles when you are walking with a camcorder in your swinging hand, and get odd views of a world that is tuned upside-down and populated by feet! Not for those who suffer mal-de-mare. I discovered that what you can achieve with a 35mm SLR at 2000th of a second simply can’t be done with a camcorder. So I bought a sturdy tripod. This improved my captured images no end. No longer did my efforts turn out like arty scenes from “LAPD Blue” on funny-tablets, but were reasonably stable images.There have been a few occasions when our dogs have bashed into the tripod - this, for future reference, gives a good impression of an earthquake! And there was an occasion when the “ankle-bighter” decided that the angle of shot needed to be redirected - I have some delightful images of a one year old sitting in a geo-stationary position, and the camcorder and tripod are all whizzing around him! Very arty! And so to editing...Being a computer bod, I simply had to get the gadget to speak with my PC. That’s the last time I can use the word ‘simply’ in this section. I have been in the computer biz for a few years - since 8086 PC’s and DOS two point something. I cannot believe that ordinary humans are expected by hardware and software companies to be capable of setting up their own PCs for digital editing. The level of problems that I encountered were mainly of a ’professional’ nature and were largely unsupported by the vendors. It would seem that they expect all of their customers to be PC geeks, and that any problems that arise are the province of someone else. Anyhoo... I first experimented with Pinnacles Studio DV. Mmmm. After reading a favourable article I purchased the product.

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