Reviewed by John Sullivan, GSBUG

Summary

VideoWave is a program that you use to edit the tapes you made with your camcorder. Normally, when you record a lot of tapes, you wish you could cut out the best parts of each and put them all together onto one. They might be a birthday party tape, or a wedding, or maybe your vacation trip to Mozambique. VideoWave is one of the many products on the market which can help you do this, plus it can add a bunch of special effects, create moving titles, add narrations ("voice overs"), music and sound effects, do live video and image capture, and output it all to .avi, Quicktime or Mpeg video.

From The Beginning

Bob Hudak first approached me with VideoWave; the Club had received version 1.5, and he needed someone to try it out and write an article on it for the newsletter. A few days later, he sent me an e-mail message saying that the Club's Executive Board had decided that if someone reviewed a product, and wrote an article that the Board approved of, they would be able to keep the product! Thanks, Bob, I'll take it!

However, now that I've started this article, I see it's going to be a bigger project than I originally expected. I know that some of you have trouble staying with me once I get to typing, so that's why I gave you a short synopsis in the first paragraph. This looks like it's going to be a long story.

If you're still with me, I should say that I had some problems using this software at first, and I wasn't sure if it was me, or the program, and at one time I was ready to give it back to Bob and say "forget it". However, now that I've spent some more time with it, I discovered that the problems were neither me, nor the software, but rather my computer! Having already had a little experience with computer video is what probably kept me from giving up; I've seen some of the problems that you can run into. This computer is a Pentium 200 with 64 MB RAM, a 4.3 GB SCSI hard drive and an Adaptec 2940UW controller, and it's just too slow!

A Short Intro To Editing

For those of you who aren't doing video editing on your computer yet, I'd better stop right here and give you a little background info. Camcorders record video somewhat like the old movie cameras did. In the old days, if you had wanted to photograph a still image, you would have used a regular camera, and just taken a "snapshot". But when you wanted to capture moving objects, you got out your "movie" camera, and filmed the action, and then played it back with a movie projector. If you had one of those old 8mm cameras, you could take the film (after it was developed) and hold it up to the light and see what you had filmed. The film was like a series of snapshots, all strung together, one after the other. The projector played back the film, and the single images were projected up on the screen so fast that it looked like the images were really moving!

Today's camcorders are very similar. They capture a bunch of still images at a fast rate, and when you play them back in your VCR, it appears as if you had actually filmed objects in motion. However, they are still only a bunch of single images recorded at a high rate. Camcorders record about 30 "frames" or still-images per second. You could do the same thing with a regular camera, if you could push the button 30 times a second, for minutes or hours on end! But then you would have to take the whole stack of photographs that you made and flip through them (at a rate of 30 per second) in order to see the action that you recorded! It's much easier to use a camcorder.

And camcorders are fine. When you're done recording, you can play it back from the camcorder right into your TV (with the proper connections), or take the tape out and play it back with your VCR. You don't have to have the film developed, and you don't have to wait for it to come back from the photo shop.

However, once you decide that you want to "edit" your tapes, life begins to get tough. With film, whether it's the 8mm size that you shot with your movie camera, or the 16mm size that movie studios use, you just take a pair of scissors and cut out the shots that you don't want, then use some Scotch tape to tape the film back together, and you can cut and rearrange and discard and edit and tape all day long, until you get your masterpiece just the way you want it.

Video tape is recorded magnetically, so you can't just look at it and see where the good parts are, and where you want to cut it. Also, it's recorded diagonally, rather than straight across like film is. Plus, the tape is moving across a recording head which also is spinning. This means that you don't end up with something that you can just cut and tape back together.

The simplest form of editing is to use two VCR's, or "decks" (short for "tape decks"), one to playback the original tape, and one to record a new tape. You play your original tape on the playback deck and record a copy of it on the record deck until you get to a part that you want to cut out, then you put your recording deck on pause. You continue playing back your original tape on your playback deck until you get to the beginning of the next part that you want to keep, and then you un-pause your recording deck and it continues recording right where you left off. Also, if you have a bunch of tapes, you can record the best part from one, then put your recording deck on pause, take the first tape out of your playback deck and put in another one, then fast forward it to the part you want to keep, and then take your record deck off pause and continue recording. This way, you can "assemble" different "cuts" or "clips" from many tapes onto one.

Putting Your Computer To Work

The next step up is to use your computer to do some of the work. Hardware products like Pinnacle Systems' Studio 400 (www.pinnaclesys.com) are an external box that you plug into your computer's parallel port. It provides you with an on-screen interface where you can play back your tapes, and mark the beginning and ends of the parts you want to keep. Studio 400 doesn't copy ( "capture") full versions of your tape, that would be too slow and would require lots of hard drive space. Instead, Studio 400 saves smaller, highly compressed, versions of your tape, that you can see and move around. Your original tapes aren't affected, Studio just makes real small copies of them onto your hard drive that you can move around and combine into a template for your finished product. Then when you get your tapes rearranged the way you want, Studio 400 takes the original tapes and makes a full size recording for you.

Sound confusing? It's not, once you've done it once or twice. You just play your first tape and tell Studio 400 to "start here" and "stop here". Studio 400 doesn't actually delete any of your tape, it just remembers which parts you want to save, and which parts you don't. After you've run all the tapes by Studio 400, and told it where to stop and start, you're ready to record your masterpiece. Studio 400 will tell you to put in the first tape, and then will fast forward it to the first part that you want to keep, and then it will start up the record VCR and record until it gets to the end of the first section. Then it will fast forward to the next part you want to keep, or will ask you for the next tape, and will send that part out to the recorder. When it's done, you'll have one tape with all the best parts of the other tapes, all in the order that you set up.

Studio 400 comes with the necessary cables to hook up your VCR and camcorder, and also has cable with infrared connectors so that it can control your VCR or camcorder by remote control, if they use the standard infrared remote controls, like most do. It also has cables to match the LANC connector that some camcorders come with for remote control operations.

If this sounds like a product you'd be interested in, run out right now and get the November 98 issue of Windows magazine. On page 110, it has a review of Studio 400 that you want to read. Also, Pinnacle has announced a new $30 rebate, reducing the price of Studio 400 to $199!

Other external hardware products are the Snappy by Play (www.play.com), designed primarily for capturing still images from video and Iomega's Buz, which is a SCSI device, rather than a parallel-port type, and requires a SCSI controller card.

Moving Up to Computer Video Editing

When you're tired of doing all this tape swapping and you want an easier way, plus you want an easy way to add special effects, and titles, and narration, and etc. etc., you're ready to start looking at computer editing. (Also called "non-linear" editing) With a computer, you can "capture" (record) your video tapes onto your hard drive, and then use an editing software like VideoWave to cut and paste and rearrange your clips; add sound, music and special video effects, titles, transitions, animations, and lots of other stuff. Remember, anything you can do with a video editing software you can do by hand (swapping tapes in and out, pausing and unpausing, rewinding, correcting, re-doing, re-re-doing). People have been editing video tapes by hand for many years, ever since video tapes first came out. But computers and video editing software make it a lot easier, especially once you want to do more than just cut out that section of tape that you made where you forgot to take off the lens cap!

The Hardware

Now the downside: Non-Linear editing is extremely resource intensive. That means that you need the biggest, baddest computer that you can afford. You're going to want the fastest processor, the most memory, the super fastest hard drive (maybe even more than one) and hard drive controller card. Plus, you need a good capture card. The video editing software only can work on your tapes AFTER you get them onto your hard drive, and you need a "video capture card" in order to do this.

The capture card has a connector on it where you plug in a cable from your VCR, and then when you play a tape in your VCR, the card changes the signal into digital information that the computer can understand. There are quite a few different ones on the market, but the All In Wonder PRO seems to be the most famous. When I bought mine, I got the 8MB model, and it cost me over $250. Lately, I've seen them advertised for under $200. Video cards use their own memory chips (instead of tying up your system RAM), and they come in 2, 4, 8 MB, and more.

Also, when I bought the All in Wonder Pro, I selected the OEM model, which is just the card, cable and installation software, but without the extra software that's bundled with the full version. As it turns out, the full version comes with MGI's VideoWave!

Some of the other popular capture cards available are the Canopus Total 3D and the Dazzle. For more information on these and other cards please read the article in March 1998 PC Computing magazine (probably available in your local library, or maybe online at www.pccomputing.com). These cards are what PC Computing magazine considers "affordable video capture" (from $65.00 to $500.00) and each comes with a video editing software. The magazine article also listed "professional video capture" cards in the $500 to $1000 range, the highest being the miroVideo DC30 Plus which includes a copy of Adobe Premiere 4.2. (the best!)

It's pretty much you get what you pay for, so what you end up buying will probably be determined by how much you want to spend. However, in any price range, there still are comparable products that you'll have to choose between.

Hardware Requirements For VideoWave

As listed in the manual, the absolute minimum requirements in order to run VideoWave 1.5 are:

Minimum Pentium 90...MMX recommended

Windows 95(or98) or NT

Min 16 MB Ram ...32 recommended

Min 20 MB free hard drive space for the basic program

(plus LOTS more for your video clips -john)

Super VGA card w/ 2MB video RAM, min 800x600 resolution at 16 bit color

Direct Draw drivers recommended

16 bit stereo sound card and speakers

CD-ROM drive

It also says: "For video capture, you will need a capture card, TV tuner card or a video capture enabled PC."

Previewing Your Work

Like I said, my old 200 MHz Pentium really has a hard time keeping up with video editing. When I tried using VideoWave, it worked ok, but I kept getting color shifting and streaks in the video when I "previewed" it. Then I noticed on the package that the software is MMX compatible, and although my processor is a Pentium 200, it is not the MMX model. That may have a lot to do with it not being able to keep up.

I probably should explain "preview", here. Because full motion video is so hard on a computer, you don't get to see your results in "real time" until after you've saved your final production back onto your hard drive and then played it back from there. The larger your images are (160x120, 320x240, 640x480) and the more colors used (256; 16 million) the harder the computer has to work to show them to you at a speed of 30 images per second! The images you taped with your camcorder are taped full screen, with full color (16 million colors possible with each pixel) and at full motion (30 frames per second). The normal home computer cannot replay these in real time, so it has to compensate for it. With the video editing software, you normally work in a "preview" window, which may be about one-eighth or one-quarter of the actual size of the recorded images. So the computer has to do only a fraction as much work and it is better able to keep up with the 30 frame per second frame rate (called 30 fps). Also, it may use less colors per pixel than the original image. Video tapes are recorded with EACH PIXEL able to be any one of over 16.7 million colors! To store 16.7 million possible color options, the computer uses 24 bits of memory for each pixel. A standard computer screen at 640x480 resolution has 307,200 pixels. Multiply that by 24 and the computer has to process 7,372,800 bits of information for each frame. Multiply that by 30 frames per second, and the computer has to process two hundred twenty one million, one hundred eighty four thousand (221,184,000) bits of information for EVERY SECOND that your video runs!

Are you starting to feel sorry for my poor Pentium 200 yet?

Another way the computer attempts to keep up with the action is by using less colors per pixel in the "preview" window. I believe this is what was causing the color shifting and streaking when I was working with VideoWave. My computer just can't keep up with the action in full color (16 million colors per pixel), so it was doing the best it can by approximating the colors. This is probably a function of the VideoWave software that adjusts itself to compensate for slower computers like mine (this is a good thing). You'll also see what's called "dropped frames". As the computer tries to keep up with the speed of the video, it occasionally gives up and "skips" over one or more frames until it is back in sync with the video. You'll see this as a slight stuttering effect when you play back your video, both in the preview window, and in the final production.

Rendering

Unless you have the top of the line, fastest computer, you'll run into some of these compensations, and you'll just have to live with them until you're ready to upgrade your hardware, which brings us to "Render". VideoWave calls this "Produce" and it's the final step in outputting your masterpiece back onto your hard drive as a finished production. Rendering (or Producing) your video is when you are all done editing and are ready to make the final version. The software will render, or compute and save, your production out in full color and full screen, at a designated 30 frames per second. Each frame of your production will be calculated at full screen and full color, and it will be up to your playback software to try to play it back at 30 fps.

Rendering takes FOREVER! It's something you don't want to do until you're completely satisfied with your editing. Then you hit the Produce button, and walk away while it renders. Go write a letter, or watch a movie, or do your laundry or something. A two minute .avi video rendered at 640x480 full color can easily take over an hour for the computer to finish! Now you know why you work in a smaller preview window. However, you can cut down your render time a lot by selecting to render out in a lower resolution, like 320x240 instead of 640x480. Nowadays, most people are using a screen resolution of 800x600 or more, so a video being played back at 320x240 will just appear in a small window on your monitor. But it's a way for slower computers to playback a video at full speed, or close to it. It's also a way to make the final file smaller. (I captured 17 seconds of a TV commercial at 320x240, and the file ended up over 11 MB big!) If you wanted to make a video that you could send over the Internet, you'd want to make it a lot smaller than 320x240!

Once you’re done, there'll be a file on your hard drive, with the name that you gave it, in .avi, .mov or .mpg format, depending on what you chose to render it in. Then you can use VideoWave, or another software program like Microsoft's Media Player, or Apple's Quicktime Player to replay your masterpiece on your computer monitor, or send it out to videotape if your video capture card has a video output connector.

Back To Our Program

All this doesn't tell you much about VideoWave, but it was necessary in order for you to understand how powerful this program is, and what it, and other programs like it, have to go through to make you happy.

After you install VideoWave and start it up, you're presented with the VideoWave interface (main screen). You're going to notice that it's visually quite attractive, with a section in the middle with the preview screen, and some VCR type push buttons for playing and rewinding and stuff. There's also a strip along the left side with some well designed 3D icons for things like opening a new file, saving a file, cut and paste, etc. You'll notice that things have an interactive feeling, when you move your cursor over them, they light up or move or something. You're also going to notice that you have no idea what to do with any of this stuff!

Relax, this is one of those computer programs where you're just going to have to bite the bullet and read the manual! Fortunately, MGI has done a nice job with it, also. The first half is really all you need to read, the second half of the manual goes into the theory of how videos are made and edited, and you can come back to that once you've learned your way around the interface a bit. At first the interface screen might be difficult to use, but after you've worked with it awhile, you'll find that it's very easy, and is laid out nicely so that all the functions which pertain to what you're trying to do are available without overwhelming you with choices. This means that you'll probably be overwhelmed at first, but later will be comfortable with the logic of the layout. There are different icons for opening the Video Editor for cutting and pasting your clips; the Special Effects section for adding swirls, ripples, smoked glass effects, and brightening and stuff; the Text Animator for creating moving titles, captions and credits; Transition Editor so that your clips don't have to just jump from one to the other, you can fade in and out, and add lots of different "wipes"; Video Animator for blending one clip over another, or removing backgrounds; Audio Studio for adding one or two extra audio tracks; and a Capture function which will work with your capture card so that you don't have to exit the VideoWave interface to startup your capture card's software. All of these sections have tons of more features than I can write about here, or else there won't be room for anybody else's articles. If you're interested at all in computer video editing, you need to check out this product.

VideoWave is not a simple program to learn or to use, but that's because video editing is not simple. There's a lot to learn and remember and try to balance all at the same time when you're editing, and VideoWave goes a long way to making it easier for you.

I say "goes a long way" because I still get the feeling that a program that you have to pay for should make life easier for you, and VideoWave does, but I keep thinking it could be better. And guess what? MGI is coming out with VideoWave version 2, and it should be available by the time you read this. Bob Hudak says the Club has already contacted MGI to come to one of our meetings to demo their stuff, so you can expect them to bring version 2. I definitely plan to be at that meeting!

Q&A Session

I sent a copy of this article over to Bob for him to proofread, and he sent back a couple of good questions which I think I should add:

[Q:] How many minutes of video tape can you work on at a time?

[A:] The manual doesn't answer that specifically, although it does say that the overall size of your video (including all the clips plus any transitions) is limited by available system memory. When you're editing one clip, I believe the whole thing is loaded into memory, so it would have to be smaller than whatever memory is available. So, if memory is a problem, you would probably use your capture card to capture a small segment or scene, and then edit it, trimming it down to the exact frames that you want to keep, and then save it back to your hard drive. Then when you had all your clips trimmed to size, you could bring them back into the program to assemble into the final production.

[Q:] Do you only work on the section that you want to cut out?

[A:] Yes, I think you would normally have a videotape (or tapes) with a few good scenes on them, and lots of excess footage that you don't want. So you would probably "capture" the segments that you want to keep, then "edit" each one to trim them down to cut off any garbage frames, and then save back to your hard drive. Then you would bring back your edited clips to combine them all into your finished production.

[Q:] When and how do you put it back on tape so you can watch it on your VCR?

[A:] When you have all your tapes edited, you would bring back each saved clip, and assemble them in the order that you want them to appear on your final tape, and "produce" them. They'll be saved back onto your hard drive as one single file, and you can playback that file and watch it on your monitor, or play it back and record it onto tape. Producing them ("Rendering") can take quite a while, but when it's done, you have one single file in .avi, quicktime or MPEG format. Then, if your video capture card has a video and audio output (not all do!) you can connect it to your VCR and record it back to tape.

[Q:] Is all this practical with average equipment?

[A:] That depends on what you mean by average. Capturing video and digitizing it, editing and assembling it and then rendering out to tape requires more than what most people would probably consider "average equipment". You'll need a video capture card with video and audio in and out, in order record back to tape. Plus you'll need a big hard drive, and lots of memory. The hardware requirements mentioned above for VideoWave should be considered the barest minimum...you will want a much more powerful machine!

There are other options for people with slower machines; some of the external hardware devices don't actually save video to the computer's hard drive, they just use the computer to help you keep track of what you're doing. People with slower machines should take a look at Pinnacle Systems' Studio 400, or one of the other such products mentioned above.

ps. MGI announced at this year's COMDEX that they will be shipping VideoWave 2 in Dec 98. Here's the info and hardware requirements that they posted on their website:

(For version 2.0):

System Requirements, Availability & Pricing

MGI VideoWave II requires a Pentium 166MHz processor

(266MHz Pentium II recommended for DV);

32MB RAM (64MB recommended);

1GB hard disk (for program and workspace;

6 GB UDMA or SCSI HDD recommended for DV);

SVGA (800x600 16 bit color);

16-bit stereo sound card and speakers;

and CD-ROM.

The software is designed for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4, and MGI is also developing VideoWave II to run under the BeOS (available 2H, 1999). A "Video for Windows" or "DirectShow" compatible video capture board or TV Tuner card is required to capture from analogue video devices (like a camcorder or VCR) with "video out" or "TV out" for output back to tape. An IEEE 1394 card (8920, 8940 or 8945) is required to capture from and output to a DV camcorder. Available December 1998, the software will continue to be offered to users for less than US$100.

[Q:] Would you buy this software to do this job?

[A:] I like VideoWave 1.5, and if you don't mind, I think I'll keep it. However if I needed to buy today, I would take a look at Lumiere also (see below). Of course, VideoWave 2.0 should be out by the time you read this.

Other Software Products

This article is brought to you through the kindness of the MGI software company, who provided our Club with a free copy of VideoWave 1.5 to try out. When I got it home, I looked in my pile of magazine clippings to see if I had a write-up about it, and found one that mentioned VideWave, plus Adobe Premiere and another product called "Lumiere". In that Sept 98 article in PC World, Dan Littman preferred Lumiere over VideoWave, even though it's about $20 less (Adobe Premiere retails about $600, VideoWave about $99 and Lumiere about $79, although all have cheaper "street" prices.) When I contacted IMISOFT, the makers of Lumiere, and told them I was reviewing VideoWave for my Club's newsletter, and asked if they would like to send me a copy of Lumiere so that I could compare them (meaning would they send me a FREE copy), they sent back a nice note that effectively said that Lumiere is a bargain at $79. (meaning I should just go and buy it if I want to try it out).

In his article, Mr. Littman was comparing VideoWave version 1.5 to the newest version of Lumiere, which hadn't been released yet. Since then, I've learned that VideoWave has a new version 2 out, so perhaps it will "leapfrog" past Lumiere, who knows? Rumor is that MGI will be coming to one of our meetings in the near future and then we can see VideoWave 2.0 for ourselves.

Pricing:

VideoWave $89.95 (CompUSA)

Lumiere Video Studio $74.95 (CompUSA)

Adobe Premiere 5.0 $559.95 (CompUSA)

All In Wonder Pro AGP w/8 MB $169.95 (CompUSA)

Pinnacle Systems' Studio 400 $199 (CompUSA)
(after $30 rebate from Pinnacle)

(Updated on 12-08-1998--FC)