Video Editing Books

There are so many better choices. Much of the information is sketchy, redundant, or just wrong. Steer clear of this one.

At last, a book that is understandable, compelling and
practical! As a teacher of film at USC, I found this
book enormously helpful. I will make it required reading
for my students.

This book is so much fun! I am now totally hooked on digital cameras! I've been looking for help with digital photography and this book is the best I've seen---informative, well-written, great photos. If you aren't already interested in digital cameras, you will be after you read this book.

Book Review: Making Movies, Photos, Music and DVDs on Your Mac
Chris Seibold
Columnist/Cartoonist

Making Movies, Photos, Music and DVDs on Your Mac
By Jesse Feiler
Publisher: McGraw Hill/ Osborne
SBN: 0072225548
...

Imagine for a moment that you have a spiffy new iMac and further suppose that you want to use it to make all kinds of multimedia. Heck if you have a newish Mac you know it comes pre loaded with iTunes for music, iPhoto for pictures, iMovie for making your own movies and iDVD for cramming that newly made movie on a DVD disc. Thatýs a lot of programs to take in all at once and if you have a new Mac you know that the manuals are nonexistent. So are you left running out to buy a book for each program? Maybe not, perhaps Jesse Feilerýs book "Making Movies, Photos, Music and DVDs on Your Mac" can answer your specific needs for a fraction of the price of four individual tomes and with a good deal more depth than an all-encompassing Mac reference.

The first problem with the "Making Movies, Photos, Music and DVDs on Your Mac" is the title. It might trick you. Jesse Feilerýs book is not about making music or photos on your Mac, itýs about organizing and manipulating said multimedia. I suppose that objection is a minor quibble, after all it is the stuff between the covers that counts. "Making Movies, Photos, Music and DVDs on Your Mac", from now on referred to as MMPMD, starts out fairly basic. On page five Jesse Feiler covers the importance of "thinking digital" noting that today's computers are digital. Computers (the kind Jesse is thinking of) have been digital since 1937 but other media has been heading steadily towards the land of 1 and 0ýs for the last few years. The progression of media to the digital realm is what makes the Mac a digital hub and what makes MMPMD worth reading as long as you ignore anything that doesnýt pertain directly to computers or digital equipment.

Just what am I talking about? An example resides on page 21 where Jesse Feiler is chatting about visual perception. Sure this topic may seem a bit extraneous to some (and I would agree) but if youýre going to jam this kind of information in you should at least get it right. After noting that you need your brain to see (who knew?) we are treated to the following:

"Light, like all other electromagnetic radiation, consists of waves. All electromagnetic waves behave in the same way. This is why sound, light, infrared, X-rays, and gamma rays all exhibit similar behavior"

This is not some quibble about wave/photon duality or some other obscure quantum mechanical complaint my beef is a bit more basic: Just when did sound become an electromagnetic wave? Itýs been a couple of years since my class in classical mechanics but way back in ý97 science was pretty sure that sound waves were mechanical.

Once we get the first chapter out of the way we can begin to actually eye the book for the intended purpose of using our Mac to the fullest in the increasingly digital world. So how do the remaining 24 chapters hold up? Generally pretty well, the prose is easily understandable and the book is full of useful iMovie tips I havenýt seen elsewhere. The iPhoto information is quite thorough and useful and the iTunes chapters are more than passable. The last few chapters are "case studies" which are fairly useful to help the reader realize just what the "hub" can do.

While mostly solid (say 85%) MMPMD also has more than itýs fair share of "why the hell is this here?" spots where you are left wondering what the point was of the last few pages. A prime example of this can be found in the chapter on Applescript. The reader is treated to a couple pages full of Applescript terms and lines of Applescript code but not enough info to write a useful Applescript. The point of the chapter seems to involve a wish to get the reader to learn Applescript elsewhere and noting that there are quite a few useful downloadable scripts. My question remains: why did I wade through all that Applescript stuff just to find out I need to get a different book to actually write an Applescript?

Bottom Line: When MMPMD is going well itýs full of tricks and solid tips. When MMPMD is going bad it can be quite a time waster. My advice to those who buy this book: Make frequent use of the index to avoid the tangential information scattered throughout MMPMD.

MacMice Rating: 2 out of 5

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Seibold

Now in an updated and expanded third edition, The Technique Of Film And Video Editing: History, Theory, And Practice by Ken Dancyger (Professor of Film and Television, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University) provides a thoroughly "reader friendly" introduction and survey of proven editing techniques and how those techniques influence the editing process, as well as presenting the history, theory, and aesthetics of editing in film and video. Nicely organized into three major sections (History of Film Editing; Editing for the Genre); and Principles of Editing), The Technique Of Film And Video Editing is enhanced with the inclusion of "Cutting Room Procedures", a filmography, a glossary, a selected bibliography for further study, and a comprehensive index. No film school or academic library film/video production instructional collection can be considered complete without the inclusion of The Technique Of Film And Video Editing as a core reference. Also very highly recommended for film students and aspiring film makers from Focal Press is Blain Brown's Cinematography: Image Making For Cinematographers, Directors, And Videographers (02-40805003, $44.99).

film, video, non-linear, linear - it's all pictures and sound. This book was everything i was looking for. It's not an explanation of how to edit. It's about how to think, how to dig deep inside your feelings and appy those feelings to the work you do. Forget the technicalities, forget the jargon, this is about asking yourself the question - what do i want the viewer to feel? It inspires you to think beyond what you know. I have been editing for a number of years - i am a better editor after reading this book.

This book will give you a general history of editing. Also you will find in "Editing for the genre" section examples of different film editing "styles" for different genres. Honestly the principles of editing section is very weak. Also the non linear editing topic is not covered in depth. The name can be confusing for some people: This book is NOT about the technique and There is almost nothing on "video" in it. It is about creative and aesthetical sides of editing with examples from well known directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock etc.

I just read a chapter from this book on DMN. Maybe the author has something interesting to say or maybe some new insights - I'll never know. The writing is so poor that each sentence needs to be dissected to be understood.

"In the world of the music video, real place is far less important. In fact, they are not as important as references to other media and other forms, to the landscapes of science fiction, and to the horror film." Huh? I'm guessing that "they" means "real place" and therefore should been "it is not as important..." But I am not sure that is what he meant. I've seen bad writing like this in user forums but never in a book. Did he have an editor?

I do have a book to recommend, though for the author, The Elements of Style. When you master that, try again but this time with an editor.

Yes, it is old technology, it is history but everyone still uses video tape. It is amazing how many adobe, final cut and avid editors know nothing about control track, ins and outs and don't even know how to read an EDL. They're all good until tape is involved.
I agree the technology is old but much of the information is still being used. I know more than one filmmaker who could have used the production advice, including recording room tone.

This book offers only general information. It's a good start to get information about concepts used in video editing but is far from offering you in depth information. Although I found some good info, I was relatively disappointed (3 stars), but maybe I had wrong expectations.

Now in a revised and completely updated fourth edition, Video Editing: A Postproduction Primer by Steen E. Browne (Senior Online Editor, New Wave Entertainment) is a very direct and straightforward "how-to" manual of the basics and the nuances of properly editing videotape. Individual chapters address creating video effects, random-access editing, audio postproduction, and much more, in this comprehensive, strongly recommended guide filled from cover to cover with tips, tricks, and techniques appropriate for video editors of all experience and skill levels.

I like to find in the book the material which I expect from its title. I would've rated this book much higher if it were called "History of video editing", which is pretty much what it is about. The fourth edition of this book, published in 2002, is heavily based on its earlier editions, which date back to the early 1990s or late 1980s. The majority of illustrations depict equipment which was used back in the 1970s-1980s. The technical editing tools presented by the author look like museum items compared to the modern computer-based editing tools, and the manuals of these programs would tell much more about digital editing than this book. The old material is occasionally updated by references to high definition TV standards and modern video tape formats, which are not clearly separated from the old ones, and it is not even clear which of 10+ standards used in consumer-level camcorders and in professional equipment. Some ideas on how to shoot videos to avoid common mistakes are useful, but again it is just a short chapter. To make things worse, the book contains a lot of practically useless, for most people, information such as structure of tracks on 2-inch-wide video tape used in the first videorecorder introduced in 1956, or (more modern example) position of audio and video tracks on VHS tapes. A consumer like I am can edit home videos without any of this knowledge.

It was interesting to learn when the first videotape recorder was invented and see a picture of that device and its designers, including Ray Dolby who later founded Dolby Labs. But you know, I expected to find in this book much more up-to-date and much more practical things, judging by its title and its 2002 (for the 4th edition) publication date. It took me 20 minutes to read the book (or whaever I thought was useful) from the beginning to the end.

I suppose, the 1996 year edition depicted at the top of this page is even more outdated.

My opinion and advice: Don't waste you money on it.

Writers serious about learning how to create and develop memorable characters will relish 10 Steps to Creating Memorable Characters: A Writer's Workbook. It packs in forms, checklists, and exercises to help both screen and fiction writers develop personalities, teaching the basics of building multi-layered protagonists and showing the foundation keys to possible success. It's a 'must' for any public library lending collection strong in writer's guides, as well as for many a high school or college-level collection catering to student creative writers.

After many many pages the authors end up with:

a heroin who lacks self esteem but desires independence (and had Cinderella's childhood. ie A step mother (and two step sisters) who disliked and isolated her.
A hero who is the strong silent type hiding an abused childhood
and a villein who is a control freak on the surface and a drug addict underneath.

The entire first section seems to encourage the reader to create characters that can be judge by their apperence. This is followed up by a list of subject headings which are largely self explanatory. So much so that the page of text each is given seems redundant. In most cases the short summaries at the start of the section would have been sufficent.

More than half the time the Authors are hard pressed to come up with anything new for their sample characters, and simply repeat facts that had already been added under previous headings.

Add to this the workbook format which means that every other page is left blank and you have a phenomenal waste of paper on your hands. I'm not saying that filling in a character template is a bad way to start designing a character but the technique does not need to be explained at book length.

Without good, in-depth characters to begin with, even the most exciting premise can stall, as you just don't know about the people driving it forward. While writing out the kind of detail that 10 Steps asks you to put in for each character at the front end -- that is, before you write -- may seem onerous, it makes the actual novel writing process much quicker and easier. I didn't say easy (novel writing is about as easy as childbirth). Just easier, and a lot more likely to actually get done.

Although the book isn't large, it does pack a surprising amount of information, including a range of informative sideboards, lists, references, tables, and anecdotes from the considerable body of work -- at least 30 published books between them -- created by the authors. Each of them is generous with her knowledge - providing honest, down-to-earth advice about how they write and work, and the way in which their characters move forward. There are "words of wisdom", information about genre, and even advice on dealing with minor, "walk-on" characters. There are innovative, rarely seen tips throughout the book, including such ideas as the keeping of an alphabet chart, or how to pull together a family and friends mind map.

You don't have to go the whole hog either. The examples they provide are actually fairly brief, and a good character can be outlined quite well in a few days, though I tend to work much more slowly and spend a long time on each section. One of the bits that I found most useful was step 9 - The Character Diamond. This is really a plotting exercise, but it's done with the character specifically in mind, looking at what they want and the drivers of those wants. It's simple, but works like a charm.

Not only does this kind of extensive outlining help create better characters - it gives you an almost ready-made synopsis for sending out later. 10 Steps to Creating Memorable Characters a terrific workbook, whose simplicity belies its power. It has been designed to be effective for both screenwriting and novel writing. I'm well into my second novel, and despite this book being ideally used at the front end, I found it a terrific tool for gaining a much better sense of my characters and helping me make the plot much more directly driven by them. Although many of the examples are basic ones relating to romance and science fiction, I recommend to any writer who wants an effective roadmap through the foggy and often inchoate haze that constitutes pulling together a fully-fledged fictive dream.

Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening.

Unfortunatly I bought this book "blind" after just slightly
browsing the previewpages. Having spent a night with it now I am truly dissapointed. Apparently the authors are "recording artists" or something - they certainly are not Adobe-experts that have worked their way through version after version of AP and user feedback.

Several of the 50 techniques are just using filters like the distortionfilter or crazy overuse of colorfilters to get "a creative look" or adding fire-effects.

The worst is that most examples are uninspiring, or something that would make your production look really cheesy.

The video on the CD is 10fps lousy footage.

"Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours" has so much more informative content, and professionalism, that its hard to believe. It's two chapters on tips and tricks has more info.

Please, please pick anything else - or even browse the web for better tutorials.

If you live in Oslo, Norway I will give this book away for free to the first interested - or basically throwing it away.

I love this book! It's my #1 reference for creating quick, exciting video effects. All the "recipe" work has been done for me, so I don't have to interrupt the creative flow to read a boring manual in order to find out how to apply flashy techniques. I recommend this to anyone, especially beginners!

Excellent book for beginner. I was able to create really slick video effects using the techniqes in this book, without having to read the manual! great shortcuts, excellent tips, fast results. Highly recommended...A+++

You want a book that really packs in some substance? If so, this book is for you. This author didn't waste time on stuff you already know. Rather, he clearly knows Premiere 6.5 and knows all of the inside info Adobe won't tell you. This book offers a concise primer of video editing terms and technology, giving us just the info we need to produce great movies for the Web or video. I highly recommend buying this book first, because you probably won't need any of the others.

If you are just entering the digital video world, and you don't know what a codec is, you need this book. The author explains everything and creates a foundation to build the concepts of video editing.

If you're already familiar with digital video, and you just want to know where all the buttons are in Premiere, simply to skip to the chapter on Video Editing and you're there.

The first half of the book drones on a bit about every possible preference and setting. This gets a bit dry. Be prepared to read the book twice, as much of the terms you won't understand until you experiment. Some things were glazed over e.g. I found 3-point editing to be an amazing feature.

Like other books I've read, the author really pushes single-track editing. I think single-track editing may be easier to explain, but A/B editing is much easier to visualize and work with. If you are familiar with other Adobe products, such as Photoshop, A/B editing works just like blending layers of a photograph.

This book covers version 6 as well as 6.5 - there's not a big difference between the two, unless you are really big on 'Titles'. There is a lot of great information getting your feet wet as a small-time movie producer - patents, royalties, and where to go for more information. I was left with the ability to do just about everything I wanted to do with my movies, but was left with some questions. This will not be the only book you buy on Premiere, but it should probably be the first.

I'm a 'dummie' when it comes to PremierPro, and I found this book hopeless. It is long on chatty asides and advice, and gets you lost in all sorts of tangents. I JUST WANT TO LEARN HOW TO EDIT!! My suggestion (beyond a new author) is to restructure the book so that it works through basic tutorials first and then more advanced editing later in the book. As it is now structured, all 'editing' info gets lumped into one chapter, from basic to advanced, and you can easily lose track of your objective as a student. Even then, basic questions are hard to find. Like 'how do I break up a long clip that I've uploaded into smaller clip files'? I also found the index sucks. Want to find out about the 'trim' window? Looking for info on 'cutting'? Want to know how to turn on/off the timeline? Good luck on all these. In the end I found the Adobe online tutorials were far more clear and to the point. Don't waste your money on this one. PremierPro is complex, and this book confuses and frustrates more than it helps. I suspect it wasn't really written with dummies like me in mind: check out the mind boggling chapter on color correction...

An extremely well presented, and surprisingly complete inroduction to Adobe Photoshop 6. The organization of material and page layout are outstanding, together with spiral binding and "place-mark" cover create an extremely user-friendly courseware. The focus is on essential real-world applications of the software, not special effects. Much more than an exercise book, this book will continue to serve as a reference long after the "course" is completed. Of the Photoshop introductory courseware I've seen, this is the best.

This is a horribly written book, flawed by numerous instruction errors and miserable Quality Control and editing by the publisher. The premise and idea of this series is commendable, but as someone who teaches After Effects and Premiere, this was a sad experiment. I much prefer Adobe's Classroom in a Book, and I generally find much better third party titles than Adobe's. If possible, wait for more titles for the new version 6.5 to come out... authors will have had more time to catch up to the program than this particular volume.

Whenever I work through a software tutorial, I inevitably find that some of my questions are not answered. This one is no exception but it does a better than average job. Along the way, I learned a lot that is probably good for me but which I had no pressing need to know. That is a good thing.

The book works systematically through most major topics with Pagemaker 7 and gives plenty of background information. Along the way, tutorials emphasize the important points and it was encouraging to actually get things done. The files that are needed are provided on the accompanying CD and were generally as depicted in the text; this is an exception to the general rule in my experience and very much appreciated.

All in all, I cannot claim competence in Pagemaker yet but I am a long way closer than I was when I started this tutorial 3 days ago.

In his book ver 1.5 Martin covers scripts and play all buttons. However in ver 2.0 he does not cover scripts in the book but has you go to web for that information. Plus he does not cover scripts with enough information to feel you understand it.

Feels like he was rushing to get this book out fast and then decided at last minute he left out vital information.

As a video producer in a small band, I bought this book for one and one reason only: To learn how to use A.Pack. There is no info anywhere on the web that tell you how A.Pack works, but I heard on Apple's DVD list that this book was a good resource for making AC3 files. It is, and it's even better than I imagined.

The 600 pages of text hold ideas I've never thought of, like making sure my menu buttons are placed correctly in the "title-safe zone," or making transitions for my menus. In fact, there's a whole discussion of 4:3 video, drop vs non-drop frame, pixel aspect ratio, GOPs and I-Frames in MPEG video - in many ways this book feels more like a course than a reference manual: I learned a lot about video in general!

I also now know what dialog normalization is, and that alone was worth the money. This book will be beside my computer for a while to come!

This book was definitely helpful to me; but it didn't expand a whole lot further than the 500+ page manual included with the software. Some additional helpful information on creating appropriate graphics, but I didn't learn a whole lot. I'm waiting for a really good DSP 2.0 book to come out. But until that happens, this is really the best you can do.

So many books focus on just the software and not the art and skill of getting the best raw footage to work with. Too many people, beginners and experienced, make the mistake in thinking that software is where it all begins and can magically turn badly conceived and executed material into great work. You get all the right information in this book about how to create the best results possible from the beginning of the process, and continues logically, step by step, through the iMovie software. Wouldn't you prefer learning about making good videos from authors who are experts in filmmaking and software and not just the software? This is the book to buy.

... iMovie is a very easy-to-use program, but the most important part of making a good movie is the raw footage, and "How to do Everything with iMovie" shows you how to handle everything from camcorder selection to the subtleties of proper lighting. It makes it unique among the iMovie books I've read, which focus strictly on software and not on the most important subjects of all. ... I highly recommend this book. You will learn how to make great videos, even with a cheap camcorder.

This book is very misleading. It claims to be a book about doing "Everything" with iMovie. The reality is that 50% of the book is generic movie blurb without a mention of iMovie. The rest is a beginners guide to iMovie.

If you want well rounded iMovie books. Get Pogues Missing Manual book and also a copy of Erica Saduns book. Then you will be able to do everything with iMovie.

Give this one a miss.

A must have for every filmmaker, motion picture historian, movie reviewer, and film fan. Absolutely everything you wanted to know about what goes into making movies work the way they do.

-- Reni Bor-Nevets

Your book is to long per thought. Hard to read, and some of the words you used are not even in the dictionary.

I've used this book in teaching film courses (I'm a former student of Professor Gollin myself) and find this a very readable introduction to the study of film. Prof. Gollin takes the reader through the production process as well as explaining various academic and critical approaches to film studies. I would recommend this to any serious film viewer who is looking for a place to begin a deeper understanding of this popular art form.