Video Editing Books

I have had various books which state that they can help increase your knowledge of techniques etc. They provide video exercises on an enclosed DVD-Rom, but you seemingly take forever to progress through the lessons and if there is a procedural mistake in the book, which was not seen by the publisher, you are absolutely confused. That was me, until a few weeks ago.

I stumbled across Final Cut Express 3.5 HD training DVD by Lynda.com and thought I might as well try it, I was sceptical and wondered how they are going to tackle this subject. But to my surprise they take you many of the essential aspects by viewing the actual screen and taking you through steps, so you can see for yourself how things are done. From setup to trimming techniques and beyond. I found myself picking up little tricks in the first 1 hour that I had not ever learnt over a 6 month period with my previous training book. Although the DVD is not without its faults see below.

The DVD also provides a series of exercises which are included which allow you to try your hand at the same project shown on the DVD. It is cumbersome as the trainer is refering to the exercise media and acting as if you are participating at the same time when you can't view your project and the training screen at the same time (even in window mode). Another bug is that there is no stop, pause, ff or rewind buttons on the DVD menu(only a scroll bar at the bottom of the window), not a major problem but if you want to practice and want to pause the video in a certain spot it would appear this is impossible. The only option. Restarting the video and scrolling to your desired part of the training video again.

Don't get me wrong. This DVD is worth the money and is 100 times better than just a book, because you can see what is going on and you have someone showing you at the same time, who is sharing his own tips and tricks whilst openning up Final Cut Xpress to you. For example, did you know that it is better for a photograph being imported into Final Cut to be in tiff format....I didn't.

The trainer was experienced and friendly, even if his vocabulary was a tad techno. But if you did not understand something you just slide the scroller back to the part you are not sure about and replay.

Overall I found it heaps better than a reference training book. The trainer readily provides solutions to better known issues experienced with Final Cut, he opened up my eyes as to why certain settings in preferences, affect the program in acertain way. Much better than a book. But still has its cons. You will have to practice after having watched the video and then come back to see how you went. In a nutshell, it is worth it, much more than a book and you come to grips quicker having it shown to you. The other good thing is that you can have your Final Cut open at the same time and practice immediately. Have fun!

Froug's follows up his first book with a average sequel. He interviews quite a few 'new' screenwriters including Dan O' Bannon (Alien), Daniel Pyne(White Sands), Greg Widen(Highlander) and the writing duo of Jack Epps and Jim Cash (the original writers of Top Gun). These writers are succesful, talented but they don't really have that much to say about screenwriting.

One of the appeal of the first book was to read interviews with writers who had already written classics such as 'The Apartment' and 'The Great Escape'. To hear what they thought about the process of screenwriting. With this book, it mostly concentrates on the interviewees careers. A real mixed bag but still well worth exploring.

While reading this book, it became clear the author has a lot of good knowledge about the film editing process, plus years of experience he could share. Unfortunately, his writing style, organization, and grammar could all use some work. I couldn't make much sense of the way the chapters are organized, and the contents of chapters often seemed somewhat random. The result is that you often don't get what you're expecting from each chapter, and then valuable bits of advice will pop up in unexpected parts of the book.

As a guide to getting the most from Premiere, I don't think this book is very successful. It's too scattershot and, well, not big enough. However, it definitely contains some good information for those willing to search for it.

I was interested in finding a great tome about rewriting, as the majority of books out there just focus on cranking out that first draft. This book really disappointed me. There are lots of anecdotal stories about the Biz, but precious few kernels of nuts-and-bolts rewriting advice. Almost 140 pages are spent on a "script" (about the Abominable Snowman!) that is presented three times to show the evolution of a rewrite; however the quality of the script (as well as the author's overly succinct rewrite notes on why a change was made) feels very amateurish. The search for a great rewriting book goes on...

The paperback version of this book includes a CD, and the book is organized around the materials on that CD. Neither the CD nor the materials on it are provided with the eBook. So you can read about things you should be able to do if you had the CD, but you can't do any of them. You'd think somebody would have thought of that before converting the paperback to eBook format. As it is, the ebook is almost the same price as the hardcopy but is next to useless.

I first decided to learn Adobe After Effects 7.0. I used that classroom in a book and it was fabulous. Within 2 days I was done with the book and had learned a lot. The After Effects 7.0 book was consistent: When it told you to do something, what they expected that you would get, you DID get. If there would be something fishy, the book would say " Your going to see Blah, Blah, Blah, but don't worry, we will take care of that later." And they did! With this Premier 6.0 book, I have been working on the preview lesson (Tour) for an entire day and am always asking "What???" The book tells me to do something...I do it...later on when I playback my video things are clearly wrong. I finally just started blindly trusting what it said to do, thinking that the issues I was seeing would be cleared up later, just that they are not letting me know. Wrong! This book just isn't clear and consistent. I'm going to try to keep going...maybe the rest of the lessons will be better, but I am extremely disappointed.

Whoa! I see read some bad reviews for this book! And I totally disagreed with them. Sure some of you major in computer programming, engineer, and many other occupations. but your going to have to be realistic and realize that this is "premiere" this is NLE ( Non-Linear Editing) and if your not familiar with it. Of course your going to have difficulty learning it.

This book is great! This is the second adobe premiere book i got. I was intimidated by it at first so i bought "Adobe Premiere The Visually in full color 6.0" you know that book with pretty pictures. However i came to the point that if i really want to learn premiere i am going to have to challenge my self and i did that!

Its not impossible to learn adobe premiere! However its not simple either! If you want to just cut and paste and add transitions. That will take you less then an hour. However if you want to learn how to add effects, work with keys, over laying, audio, superimposing, etc., etc., etc. This is the book for you, In other words if you want to be a very experience user with premiere get this book! If you want a challenge get this book! If you want to make profesional Video get this book!

If you want to make simple home video, Just learn some of the basics, Cut, Paste, Transitions and compression. Or get Video Wave and graduate from it and come to premiere. ( I did )

This book should be looked at as a companion to Adobe manual, or as a practical introduction to Premiere. It guides the user, which is assumed to be a complete novice in Premiere, step by step through hands-on lessons and explains along the way some ideas and principles of digital video editing. As all other "classroom in a book" manuals, it is very well edited proofread (which means that it contains very few errors - if the authors say "click on icon A in palette B", they mean exactly that) and all files which the book refers to can indeed be found on the enclosed CD (I saw so many books with some of the tutorial files missing...). Unlike some other reviewers, I had no problems reproducing the actions described in the book on the computer screen, as long as I was careful to reproduce the steps exactly as they are described.

All this said, this book is not intended to be used as an advanced level manual. While it touches to some extent all features of Premiere, it does not necessarily goes into details of all of them. One could definitely benefit from a combination of practical lessons offered by this book with insights that can be found in other books. But it is invaluable as a means of the first exposure to Premiere and as a way to get a basic practical training in Premiere in a short time.

The tutorial files and the structure of lessons are the same as in the earlier version of the book, "Premiere 5.0 classroom in a book". The difference in mostly in explanation of DV format, DV capture, and new features of the timeline and audio editing. This book can also be used for Premiere 6.5 since the difference is primarily in improved title editor and availability of MPEG2 export.

I read this book twice within a week, first time just reproducing step after step and trying to grab the concepts, and the second time playing around and experimenting. After these two readings, I feel that I have a good understanding of the program and understand its functions and procedures involved in digital editing to the level sufficient to apply this knowledge to practical editing.

I do believe that "learning by doing" is the best way to learn how to work with a piece of software. Therefore, I ranked it 5 stars - with a note "book for beginners"

Whoa! I see read some bad reviews for this book! And I totally disagreed with them. Sure some of you major in computer programming, engineer, and many other occupations. but your going to have to be realistic and realize that this is "premiere" this is NLE ( Non-Linear Editing) and if your not familiar with it. Of course your going to have difficulty learning it.

This book is great! This is the second adobe premiere book i got. I was intimidated by it at first so i bought "Adobe Premiere The Visually in full color 6.0" you know that book with pretty pictures. However i came to the point that if i really want to learn premiere i am going to have to challenge my self and i did that!

Its not impossible to learn adobe premiere! However its not simple either! If you want to just cut and paste and add transitions. That will take you less then an hour. However if you want to learn how to add effects, work with keys, over laying, audio, superimposing, etc., etc., etc. This is the book for you, In other words if you want to be a very experience user with premiere get this book! If you want a challenge get this book! If you want to make profesional Video get this book!

If you want to make simple home video, Just learn some of the basics, Cut, Paste, Transitions and compression. Or get Video Wave and graduate from it and come to premiere. ( I did )

I bought this book out of desperate at a neighborhood book store, and found out it was no more than the User Guide came with the application. Invest your money for something else.

This book appears to have a lot of helpful information in it, but there are a lot of gaps. It takes a subject and touches the tip of every iceberg, but leaves way too much information out and assumes way too much knowledge on the user's part. The photos of the projects are horrid; just barely ledgible and convey no real information about what each step is trying to accomplish. The section on superimpostion is a hash of jargon and half formed concepts. Useful if you can get it cheap, but otherwise save your dough.

Firstly, a little about myself so you can gauge how useful this review is to you; I'm new to video editing. I'm new to Adobe Premiere and I'm absolutely frustrated with other applications like Ulead VideoStudio 6 because it isn't flexible enough for me. I haven't had the pleasure of using real-time editing facilities...yet.

After having looked at the manual and then the Classroom-in-a-book series, I think this book fit the bill quite well. It explained how to perform tasks, why the tasks were performed in a particular way, alternatives to how a task could be performed and even gives ideas on how the tasks could be used in a production with sample projects.

I actually found the reading much easier going than trying to wade through Adobe's manuals. However, having said that, the book isn't light reading either. I used it by going through the book with Premiere running. Sometimes, I would skip ahead because something caught my eye.

If you have only got the manuals to go by, pick up this book written by an experienced Premiere user willing to share those experiences.

Maybe some of thew other reviewers were expecting too much from this -- I dunno. For me, this Bible lived up to its name and provided me with everything I needed. I actually thought there was a lot of stuff in here that was original and definitely not included or addressed with the Adobe user's manual. The use of real-world videos, the regular presentation of alternatives for doing things, and the info on using Premiere with other software added way more depth than what was available from Adobe. My only criticism is that some of the screen shots are too dark.

I'm new to Premiere so I thought this book looks rather promising.
I have to admit I haven't read the whole book. I'm still stuck at chapter 1 ('Premiere Quickstart'), and that's because the steps given are not entirely in sequence, some important labels in the diagram are missing (where's the thread area you're talking about?), and things work out differently than described.
In summary, this book (at least the first chapter) is a sloppy piece of work. Don't touch it if you're a beginner.

FRED from Europe is correct in his assessment. Nothing to gain from this book.

As a "newbie" to FCP and NLE, I have found this book to be confusing. I usually don't find a clear and understandable answer to my question or problem, and I have to go elsewhere.

The book has a lot of useful information, but it can seem out of date. It focuses on OS 9 and gives only lip service to OS X (a brief ten page chapter 14 added to the end of the book). It's location of files and preferences, etc assumes OS 9. Once in a while mention is made of OS X's differences when describing the location of files (such as Easy Setups). But not always, which is confusing (for example, the location of plug-ins and preferences files is different, but you won't know that unless you go to Ch 14 and see if you can find something on them.) Another example, it offers advice on installing FCP on a partition with its own System Folder and special extension set to avoid conflicts. The unsaid assumption is that you are in OS 9. Is there any reason to follow the same precautions in OS X? (we don't have extension sets there, remember?) We'll never know--at least from this book. Further, it sometimes describes an older version of FCP - for instance, it mentions the Preferences settings window as having 5 tabs. Sorry. Has 6 now, and not all with same names. Screen shots all are from OS 9 (except for a few in Ch 14). If you're using X, I'd look for something more current.

This book just lables buttons and does not explain how to set up and use final cut pro 3. the trouble shooting section is a joke. Don't waste your money I found more useful information on the free discussion board at apple.com

I bought this book. I wish I hadn't. Entire parts of it are just the reproduction of the User guide provided by Apple. So, I'm wondering how it can be considered useful.

I am new to Adobe Premiere and I have enjoyed the class room in a book series and this book is no different. I believe you learn by doing and this book takes through step by step processes in working with the product. I learned a lot from cover to cover. The only flaw is that the book did not cover creating a VCD or putting the finished movie on CD.

This book is full of errors. Authors don't know exact names of icons, menu commands and other user's interface's element. I don't think that any of them ever used Adobe Premiere in professional production. If you consider buying this book - buy other.

This is a good book for getting familiar with Premiere 6.5, but if you're goal is the "ACE Certification" in Adobe Premiere, better find other study materials because the exam does NOT follow the lessons in this book (very diappointing).

This book almost exclusively discusses the Sony F900 (now superceeded). The author is employed by Panavision and, at the time of writing, has no experience with other cameras.
Particularly when post-production fx are required, one of the most important aspects of any electronic aquisition format is the compression ratio it employs. So I found it somewhat disturbing that this issue was entirely ignored except when critisizing the Viper for having to have a hard-disk recorder because it can't compress the image (and yet the F900 is 4:2:2 with high compression).
However, the author did mention Star Wars II as an example of the quality of the Panavised camera, yet this production employed a hard-disk recorder because of the problems caused by HDCAM compression.
I think the book shouldn't have such a general title when the contents are dominated by something so specific and reads like a sales brochure.

This book is just a commercial for the HDW F900 camera and an "ode" to Panavision (the employer of the author). Nothing to learn from it it's just a brief intruduction on video shooting.
As another reader of this book mentioned : there is nothing from a technical point of view. Nothing about compression ratios, sub-sampling, and subtilities of HD formats. And nothing about post-production.
It's all about sony and Panavision and the ability of the hdcam format to equal the specifications of 35mm film (laughs). Nothing about other vendors and formats; not even a word about DVCproHD. That's really sad for a book titled "high definition and 24p".
With many errors in this book, we feel that the author doesn't seem to have any real professionnal experience as a DP on a HD or a film project.
This book should have been titled "a brief introduction to HD and panavision hardware".

The world of HD and progressive/interlaced technology can be very complex and confusing, and I've read several technical books that keep it that way. Paul Wheeler does a superb job of being concise, clear, and extremely practical. This is the first time I've read a comparison of HD and film that was unambiguous and unemotional. I get the similarities and differences now more clearly than ever. He also goes thru the various (confusing) frame rate choices and actually lists the practical situations where you might choose one over another. Astounding! And, lastly, I greatly appreciate his confidence when he says, basically: take care to set up your camera carefully (and here are the steps), take care to set up your monitor carefully (and here are the steps), and then don't fret about creating a perfect waveform--trust what you see and be creative. There is also a great deal of user-friendly description of camera types, lenses, setups, etc. which I won't directly use in my work as an editor, but they were engaging and informative, so I didn't skip over them and learned a thing or two in the process. He has some partisan preferences in terms of brands and models, but states that all up front and clearly.
Most excellent!

Amazon has asked me to write a review on a product that I have never received. I received the Live Type Essentials box with a Word 2003 Essentials training disk inside. When I called to return the item and receive the correct disk, they told me they did not have any more in stock. I am extremely disappointed and dissatisfied with amazon. They bounced me back and forth between amazon and the company that actually was supposed to have the product and no one could give me a clear answer. I finally just asked for my money back. What a major waste of time. Word to the wise, be careful on what you purchase...they may send you something completely different and give you the run around.

I'm working through the tutorials of the online version of this video, and I must say that it seems to be a very thorough introduction to LiveType. The program is not that difficult to learn if you're an experienced Final Cut Express or Pro user, but there are hidden features that the author of this tutorial will show you how to use. The presentations are not too fast or too slow, and you can apply what you learn immediately to your own projects. Because there doesn't seem to be a book about LiveType, this video tutorial and the manual that comes installed with the program are the best best and only resources for learning LiveType.