Since i was a teenaged kid i had taken an interest in video. Growing up in a small town me and my friends would make goofy home videos with my dads video camera just to pass the time. Many years later following my first trip to England and Paris in 2000 I had decided that if i was going to continue my dream of traveling that i wanted to invest in a digital camcorder in order to capture the adventure to share with others and keep the memories for years to come. After a couple trips away with my new camcorder i realized that i ended up with tonnes of hours of video (and not all of it was especially interesting). I started looking into video editing software so i could create some highlights of my trips put to music.
The first software i began using was Pinnacle Studio 8 which was very user friendly. It was very easy cutting and editing content in order to minimize down the clips to only the best. It allows you to add in music as a seperate track which you can lock in so that cutting the video doesn't take out your music. Transitions were a snap with an entire extensive library of fades, effects, drop-windows and so on. Looking back at the the first video i made following a trip to China in 2003 I can see now how carried carried away i get with a lot of the effects. Over the years i've come to appreciate the less-is-more approach to video but at the time it was fun to have my seen overlooking the forbidden city transform into a paper-airplane and fly off into the next scene. Even better, if you really just want a cool music video and don't want to invest the time and energy into it then it even has a one click music video create function that will do all of the work for you based on a song you pick and a style. I've used this a couple times but still prefer the creativity of building my own.
This past prior to my trip to SouthEast Asia the old camcorder was starting to show a little wear and tear so I decided it was time to upgrade to a High Definition camera. Despite many options available now for cameras with built in hard drives and DVD writing i decided to stick with Mini DV as it still produces higher quality video. Unfortunately moving to HD meant additional investment in a more powerful computer with a better video card and more memory. It also meant finding better video software since Pinnacle Studio seemed to have some challenges dealing with the HD format. After some serious investigation i ended up landing on CyberLink PowerDirector. I find it's not quiet as easy to use as the Studio but for the love of HD i was willing to make the sacrifice. I absolutely love the HD quality of my videos and the effects are still pretty cool in PowerProducer. They're not as flashy as Studio but i find the cleaness of the effects a lot more professional looking. Take a look at my finished SE Asia video here:
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