The Digital Director Experience: Video Editing Fundamentals

If you've read my ramblings before, you'll know all about my unhealthy obsession with laptops for editing. The editing elite dictate that laptops shouldn't be used for editing. These people clearly live in a house with an editing studio featuring 50 screens and a separate hard drive for each video file.

I always judge my system performance on whether I want to throw the laptop out of the window. I'm not really interested in shaving 5 seconds off my boot time, or live previews of 25 ...

I've been sniffing around ways to waste money over the last few days. You know how it is. You fool yourself into thinking you need that new bit of kit, when really what hou need is to get out and be productve. My latest obsession is backing up, and boy can you spend a pretty penny on external harddrives. So it's proven an admirable a perfect way to waste a few hundred quid. Thing is, it's probably one of the rare times when my passion for spending is justified. I've been caught out by drive failures ...

I’ve been a reluctant iPad convert, but it’s slowly pushed out my laptop over the last year. I now rarely use my PC for anything other than video editing. And it’s not just the iPad, but the apps themselves that make the iPad a real alternative to using a PC. The apps often outperform their bloated PC counterpart, and at a price that suits almost anyone’s budget. So could I do without my PC? Is there an app that can compete with a PC for video editing? Could an app take a fresh approach to editing? ...

If you're anything like me, you'd happily spend a small fortune on video gear. And it's easily done - software alone can set you back a few grand. We probably talk about the latest fad more than we'll actually used it. But how do you justify spending (or as my wife would say, "wasting") money on new gear, particularly when you're just replacing a perfectly good camera.

My last "upgrade" was a DSLR. I managed to persuade myself that a DSLR was a logical step, especially ...

Cameras are everywhere and broadcasting to the world via YouTube. Mobile phones provide high quality videos in a tiny package, and phones like the nokia n8 even provide instant editing and upload. It's never been so easy to film, edit and share your video. You could say we're in a golden age of instant access and portability. A position only dreamt of 5 years ago. Anyone can become a video star, and by the look of YouTube, everyone has.

So why do I insist on lugging a small broadcast ...