First of all, I recently asked about purchasing a Sony DCR-TRV510 digital-8 cam. It's great, thanks for all the assistance, folks!

My new question: we're going to start shooting a film, and I was wondering how I would go about the editing process (I'm looking far ahead, I know). Just taping to a VCR seems kind of choppy, plus editing the audio would be difficult. A friend has a card we can use to edit some of the video, but there's no way he has enough hard drive space to hold the entire film so we can reel it back out onto a VCR. The film will probably be over an hour, which is why I'm worried: digital-8 tapes can only hold an hour of video. How can we piece together several tapes and make the shots fit together for under $200 or so?!

Thanks in advance for your time, Earl

-- Earl Newton (vadal@aic-fl.com), October 15, 1999

Answers

I'm one of those people who we went out and purchased the new Digital 8 format and must say, it's was a wise choice. I also purchased a Sony Vaio computer system with Adobe Premiere LE and paid an additional $199 to get the full blown version. I edit everthing in Premiere, and record it out onto the camera through fire wire. The hard drive on the system is partitioned, so I only get a little over 5 gigs of space(there is ways of getting around this). Here's how I do it: I shoot raw footage, log shots, import shots into computer, edit video and audio in Premiere, then record out onto camera(make sure you're using a new tape). You would then take the new tape out of the camera, erase previously edited footage from your hard drive to clear up space, then repeat the process until you have a complete project on the master tape. Since you're editing the project in increments, it may take you a while to master the process of recording material onto master tape without a glitch. You can do it this way until you're able to purchase a larger hard drive. I'm currently on the market to purchase a 27 gig hard drive and I hope to be able to record and edit up to 40 minutes of video at a time. GOOD LUCK!!

-- Mac (temac@earthlink.net), October 25, 1999.

I am shooting on a Sony TRV510 and I edit on a iMacDV SE with Final Cut Pro. Last summer I edited a wedding I shot on EditDV and had a HORRIBLE time with this same problem (the iMAC DV comes with 13 GB hard drive space which holds exactly 42.8 minutes of footage). I quickly got rid of editDV and and invested in Final Cut Pro. FCP allows you to save an edited portion of your footage to its own FCP file allowing you to erase source clips and free up hard drive space. To my knowledge FCP is one of the only software systems that allows you to do this, so it may be worth the investment. On a side note, I saved almost $500 off the price of FCP by purchasing from eBay. However if you are going to use ebay or any other private seller, make sure it is a legit unregistered copy, ther are a lot of swindlers out there... anyway email me if you have any more questions or you just want to chat film.

-- Aaron Shealy (beatjunkie@hotmail.com), November 02, 2000.