minidv beginnings

the latest ministry trial-run that i am involved in is digital video. even though i'm new to this our ministry has done a few videos for various things. advertisement videos, summary videos, video illustrations, that sort of thing. i've always had an intern who had a good camera and at least a little skill at editing videos. now i'm in the position of not having an intern with that skill or equipment. the beauty of this is that i can learn how to do it on my own and thereby make it look the way that i wanted it to look in the first place.

of course, in order to do this i've had to do some research and get some new equipment. here's what i've learned and ordered because of it.

1) the research went through indicated a computer with at least 512 mb of memory, as fast of processor as possible, a large hard rive with at least 7200 rpm but faster if possible, firewire connection, and a butt kicking video card. what i ordered is this - 3.4 p4 processor, 128 mb ddr ati 9800 pro graphics, 1 gig of memory, 120 gig primary hard drive, 80 gig secondary "video" hard drive, dvd / cd-rw drive, etc, etc. - it's hasn't been used it for video purposes yet but from my research it should work decently. it's a dell.

2) a good minidv camcorder. i bought a sony dcr-hc40. the reviews on it were quite good. i got it for $558 from www.digitalmegastore.com it should get here friday. i can't wait.

3) good editing software. adobe premierere pro and pinnacle liquid edition are supposed to be the best. they also cost $500 which i don't have in the youth budget so i had to go for the second bestpossibilitiess. the review say that the best of the cheaper software programs is supposed to be pinnacle studio 9. all that i read said that studio 9 is able to do an incredible amount of stuff - almost as much as the "big boys" - and it is only $99 - actually i got it for $59 after a rebate at amazon. it should be in tomorrow or friday so i can play around with it.