We have a US$5,000 budget to buy equipment and software for an editing project. Students and volunteers will provide the labor. Basically, we have the inputs and the outputs. What we need are the middle-puts. We have some old cameras for the inputs, and we have a community cable TV station for the outputs. What we would like to do is dump video into a computer, organize clips, add or edit sound, music and titles, and prepare the show for a DVD or tape. Ease of use and economy is more important than fancy bells & whistles. We would lean more towards a PC-based system than a Mac. Can anyone suggest some hardware and editing software that would be good for this? Brands and versions that you have had experience with would be welcome.
Hauppauge WinPVR-250, 350 or 500 for capturing from the cams. A computer with at least a 2ghz cpu, 1 gig of ram, and 2 hard drives (one for the os, another just for capturing to. XP with NTFS on the capture drive at least. (for files over 4 gig). Sony Vegas software. It will do everything you need as far as editing, transitions, effects, both video and audio, etc. Although you won't need more than Vegas, other software is mostly free. Total cost would be under $2000 for the above.
If this is for a school, I suggest hitting www.canopus.com and look into one of thier pre-built editing systems. Headaches will be a min, and your neighborhood "Experts" will all have to learn and use the same items, techiques, etc... You can get a decent one for under $5,000, plus have tech support, plus the sytem will already be tweaked for the best setup. Check it out.
