Help putting together my small business.

[twells22]

Ok I am putting together my own small business, by small I mean only me. I will be creating highlight films for high school athletes and I need help determining all the software and hardware I will need. Please give me you advice on what I need and I hope this is being posted in the right forum, if not please move it mods.

1) Editing Software:

I have reviewed nearly all editing software out there and I believe that the simple Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 will work for me. When editing film all I have to do is cut and piece together the films basically. There is no need for really fancy transitions. The biggest edit will be to pause the video and highlight certain individuals. I can do this by simply taking a pic of the video and editing it with Photo Shop.

If you feel that there is a better program for the job than Adobe's PE 3.0 please tell. Keep in mind I don't need a high priced software. But it would be nice if there was an easier way to highlight players than to go to Photo Shop every time. Please let me know if there is editing software that has this built in.

2) Hardware:

This is where I am not sure of what all I need. I have a good enough CPU for the job but what other hardware do I need to think about. My CPU has a tuner so I can send most video media to my CPU easily.

Problems that may arise and need special software:

1. Most of my projects that get sent in will be sent in on VHS and I will be sending it back on DVD so I need to be able to generate the best quality through all the transitions: VHS to My CPU to DVD. What do I need to consider for this?
2. I don't even know what this is called or what it is but I would like to be able to do it. You can see what I'm talking about in the link below. When you click on the link you will be taken to a highlight site and on the right there are samples of highlights. THEY DON'T work so don't click on them. But you can see in the thumbnail that the film is embedded in some template. Are these from a editing software or are they some template? What ever they are I would like to know how to do it. Heres the link: http://shoreconferencefootball.com/team_highlight_films.htm

For now these are all the questions I can come up with but if you can please help me and let me know of other things I should think of.

[chupacabra]

I don't know Adove Premiere Elements. I've been using Sony Vegas all the time and it's pretty nice and very easy to use. You can create the borders/templates you posted by simply creating GIF or PNG images with transparent areas and putting them onto a sperarate layer in front of the main video for instance. This is pretty easy with Vegas and probably also with Elements.

My CPU has a tuner so I can send most video media to my CPU easily.

I guess you mean your computer has a TV tuner card? CPU is a part of a computer's processor. Nevermind. I think this is the only solution to get your VHS videos onto your PC. There is no other solution I can think of. While doing so you should get yourself high quality cables which should be as short as possible to minimize foreign unwanted signals. You should also make sure that no other devices sending electromagnetic waves (like mobile phone, television device) are near your cable.

Good luck!

[twells22]

OK here is what I want and explained a little better when it comes to a background.

At www.studio1productions.com they have animated backgrounds and I would like to use these and put a video on top of them making the animated backgrounds a background for my videos. Can I do this with Adobe PE 3.0? If not what programs can I use to do this?

[Richard_G]

Best quality and tuner are mutually incompatible. If your source is on VHS it is pretty poor quality to start with, capturing using the RF modulator in the VHS player and a tuner in the pc is probably the best way of making it even worse.

Your best bet would be to look at one of the Canopus range of analogue to DV converters and capture over Firewire. At least then you'l have a DVavi file to do your editing on.

[Soopafresh]

1) Have lots and lots of disk space. Buy 2 x 500GB drives

2) If you're going to be doing lots of fancy transitions, use a Core Duo or Quad processor to increase the performance in this regard.

3) Adobe PE is good, but I too prefer the Vegas products. There's a junior version of Vegas out there as well. Vegas tends to crash less often.

4) The Canopus ADVC-110 is a good basic capture device for $220

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Imagine your business is a franchise. Document every aspect of the operations - how you're going to bill the client, the production techniques, the turnaround time. Don't leave this stuff up to improvisation.