What is digital video?
We all understand the terms video, video cameras and video tapes, but some of us may not understand the importance of the term digital. By utilizing digital video, it means that you are recording in a format that is easily transferred to a computer typically via a FireWire or IEEE 1394 cable and connection. Once you have transferred the video to your computer, it can be edited using either the free software that normally comes with a Mac or Windows based computer or any other editing software of your choice. If you were using analog video, this process would be much more complicated. In this section of Tech4Teachers.info, we’ll be covering the basics of digital video and how to get you from recording to editing in a few simple steps. I’ll discuss the hardware basics first. Click on the video below to get started.
Microsoft also provides a very good list of general requirements HERE.
Transferring Video With Windows Movie Maker
After the recording is complete, the next step is to get it from the camera to your computer. Remember, most digital video cameras use FireWire as the means of accomplishing this. Many people (I was one of them) think that this can be done using the USB port on their computer, but this is not normally the case. To make things a little easier, follow these steps below before connecting anything to your computer. These steps are specific to Windows Movie Maker. In future installments of this tutorial, I will include MAC instructions also.
- Using the digital video camera, queue up the video so that it is just before the beginning of what you have recorded.
- With camera OFF, connect your FireWire cable to camera and computer.
- Turn camera to PLAY mode (this is different than the RECORDING mode)
- If you are using Windows, you should see dialogue box asking you what you want Windows to do.
- Choose “Capture Video Using Windows Movie Maker” and click OK
After you have completed these steps, watch a tutorial I created for a Spanish project that goes through the steps of importing and editing using Windows Movie Maker.
To start the tutorial, click HERE.