Making Movies with NT

Bringing digital video editing inhouse

The inhouse creation of video used to be the private realm of specializedstudios. Now, video creation is following the growth patterns of desktoppublishing and desktop graphics. Studios used to do all the video editing withtape decks and splicing, but now the process is digital. When video editingfirst became a digital process, the Macintosh was the platform of choice. Thus,the Mac was the foundation for all the development of powerful desktop videoediting software.

The Mac OS continues to dominate the market, but advances in operatingsystems for Intel-based PCs are turning the tide. Windows NT 4.0 is spurring thePC's acceptance in the video editing market as more people discover that NT isstable, powerful, and can grow as demand increases. The true multitasking andsymmetric multiprocessing (SMP) functions available in NT also allow significantperformance gains.

Motion picture and TV studio systems might stick with the Mac because ofinertia. However, as corporate systems perform more video editing, these systemswill probably be NT based. With NT 5.0, the addition of multiple monitorcapabilities and extended driver support will strengthen NT's position.

Linear and Nonlinear Editing
The two kinds of video editing are linear and nonlinear. With linearediting, you record each piece of video and audio in sequential order. A crudeexample of linear editing is to connect two VCRs and tape from one to the other.You play a segment of your original tape on one VCR and record it on the other.When you get to the end of the segment, you stop recording and change the tapein the source VCR. You then play and record a segment of the next tape that isin the source VCR.

Nonlinear editing is the more popular type of editing because it isflexible. You don't need to worry about the order in which you record the videoand audio because you can manipulate each segment independently and move italong a time line. After you have massaged all the segments, generated thetitles and effects, and perfected the sequences, you can record the final videoeither digitally or onto a tape.

You prepare video with a five-step process.

You also need to consider cost. The video industry has a saying about videoproduction: You can get it fast, you can get high quality, or you can get itcheap--but you can have only two out of three. I have seen staggering pricequotes for productions, and I now understand why movies are so expensive toproduce.

However, I wanted to create a way to turn out videos quickly andefficiently, get great quality, and save money. To meet these goals, I had tobring as much video production inhouse as I could afford.

One of my projects is to produce a videotape demonstration of WindowsNT Magazine's Windows NT Solutions Directory (http://www.winntsolutions.com). Because the video will be used on the Internet and in other ways, I neededtop-quality and high-performance editing and production at a reasonable cost.

First, I had to decide how to edit the video. The standard method is to usea Macintosh running Avid Technology software. Avid Technology controls about 95percent of the digital video editing systems in the studio environment, andnearly all these systems are Macintoshes.

But I'm an NT guy, so I needed a way to do this project with NT. I foundseveral choices in the rapidly changing landscape of products. Because the NTdigital video editing market is new, not all devices are compatible, nor cansoftware compatibility be guaranteed. New digital video products enter themarket every day, and each company has its own approach to compatibility. Withthis dynamic market in mind, I knew that good technical support, demonstratedperformance, and reliability were critical.

Editing Software
I found about a dozen video editing packages for Windows 95 or NT. On thelow end of the video editing software spectrum, inexpensive packages providebasic editing capabilities but also have limitations that drive a professionaleditor crazy. An example is Corel Lumiere, which cannot import files larger than500MB. This file size seems large, but it is only about 45 seconds ofuncompressed video. You can import as many 500MB-or-less files as you want, butthe size limitation is a hassle.

One large step up, Adobe Premiere, from Adobe Systems, has the largestmarket share, with equivalent products on NT and the Mac. This product is easyto use and flexible, and has more plugins than any other product. Adobe Premiereis fast and works with more capture cards and operating systems than any otherprogram I found.

But the product's high-end capabilities are limited. For example, you can'trender video in real time. As a result, the system takes extra time to assemblethe video and audio layers to create a single preview. Depending on thecomplexity of each layer, the number of layers, and the length of the video, apreview might take several minutes or even hours to complete. If you arecreating complex video projects, this wait is counterproductive. However, thislimitation is where NT's scalability comes in. Adding more hardware powerdramatically improves rendering times.

Another limitation of Adobe Premiere is that the quality of outputdecreases when you must resize clips inside the program for final output. Withthis software, you will always want to set the original clips at the same sizeas the final output. Both Speed Razor and MCXpress adjusted the sizesflawlessly.

In the upper range of the product spectrum is in:sync's Speed Razor. It hasmore power, more flexibility, and more hardware demands. At the high end is AvidTechnology's MCXpress for Windows NT, which oozes raw power with fewlimitations. These professional products offer the most power, but you mustmaster these products' learning curve.

The basic differences between the low-end and the high-end products are theimport and export features and the number of simultaneous tracks available.Speed Razor really shines in these areas. With its unlimited video and audiotracks, you can make your mix as complex as you want. Speed Razor also lets youdrop any type of graphic onto its dedicated drive and will configure the graphicon the fly to let you use it with the editor. This feature was particularly nicewith .gifs, .jpgs, .bmps, and .eps files. I didn't need to worry about importingthese files--I just dropped them onto the dedicated drive.

MCXpress doesn't have as many automatic options in the import and exportprocess, but it has outstanding titling and special effects. Speed Razor offersadditional special effects and titling, but only as options. Adobe Premiere hasa wealth of add-ins because of its popularity with users. It uses more types ofinputs and capture cards and has direct plugins for export to RealVideo andother plugins for direct work with other graphics programs. Unfortunately,you'll probably need some of the plugins to get all the functionality you want.

The Hardware
Digital video editing requires a powerful system. To store uncompressedvideo, you need 11MB of hard disk space per second of video, and audio requiresadditional space. Large, fast hard disks are the order of the day. Audio/visual(A/V) hard disks have large buffers and high spindle speeds to store the datawithout dropping any frames. The minimum hard disk size is 9GB, and even withthis size, you will regularly send clips to a high capacity removable drive,such as MO (magneto-optic), SyJet, or Jaz.

Video is captured at 30 frames (NTSC) or 25 frames (PAL) per second.Capturing video requires extreme processor performance, or frames can bedropped. I tried a 200MHz Pentium Pro, and then added a second processor. Inthis case, because of the built-in MMX technology, a dual 266MHz Pentium IIwould have been even better. Using NT has its benefits--I can throw a lot morehardware at the challenge and make it work well.

Each video editing software package I tried claims to work with 32MB ofRAM. My system came with 32MB of RAM, which I quickly bumped to 96MB. Theadditional RAM made a huge difference in the system's performance.

After you configure the hard disks, the processor, and the RAM, your nextchallenge is to configure the capture card. Video devices, such as cameras andVCRs (called decks in the video industry), usually have one of three outputtypes (I list these in order of picture quality, starting with the lowestquality): composite (using RCA jacks), separate video (S-video), and component(using multiple BNC connectors). The low-end cards, such as the Intel SmartVideo Recorder III, have both composite and S-video inputs. The PVR-2500Perception Video Recorder card from Digital Processing Systems (DPS) and theTarga 2000 RTX board from Truevision have all three types of input jacks. Othercapture cards are available, but these three cards are the most common in theirrespective markets.

Prepare to allocate a lot of physical space for your capture card. For thePerception card, with its main capture card plus its daughtercard, you will needtwo PCI slots. I had five PCI slots, which are now occupied: one for my videocard, one for my SCSI card, two for the Perception card, and one for my soundcard. With these cards installed, I don't have room for my network card.

The next critical component you need is the sound card. You can use anysound card with Intel's Smart Video Recorder, which worked well with my standard16-bit sound card. Obviously, the better the card, the better the sound will be.To use Speed Razor, you need to add DPS' A4V, Antex Electronics' 23e or StudioCard, or at a minimum, Turtle Beach's Tahiti or Monterey sound cards. Truevisionincorporates audio into its Targa 2000 video boards. The difference among thesound cards is in matching the audio to the video to avoid a poor lip-synchingjob. The high-end boards use the industry standard SIMPTE time codes to makematching audio and video easier.

Exporting Computer Video
Because so much of my work is based on computer training, I need to transfermy computer video to videotape. You can export video with a scan converter, avideo card with analog video out, or a screen capture. Higher-end video cardswith analog video out perform comparably to scan converters, which cost morethan $20,000.

A scan converter takes the analog signal that usually goes to the monitorand changes it to NTSC video--you can actually watch your computer's screenimages on a regular TV. Several devices claim to perform this function. Scanconverters usually work with any operating system because they are externaldevices that simply change the type of signal.

Video cards with analog video out bring the scan converter into thecomputer system with a set of chips on the video card, plus special connections.Although several outstanding cards are on the market, I couldn't find any thathave NT drivers to take advantage of the video-out capabilities.

Screen-capture software takes pictures of the screen at a rate of 3 framesper second to 30 frames per second and saves these images on your hard disk as.avi files. This process does not require analog-to-digital conversion, and thequality is very high.

Lotus ScreenCam (screen-capture software) outperforms both analog video outand scan converters, but requires offline preparation of the video. It also hassome compatibility problems with NT. I chose the ATI Technologies 3D Xpression+PC2TV accelerator for live capture and HyperCam (another screen-capture program)from Hyperionics for offline capturing of video screens.

To export the video, I recommend at least a 166MHz Pentium if you chooseLotus ScreenCam or HyperCam. If you use anything less than a 166MHz Pentium, youwill encounter quality problems. For example, when I ran HyperCam on my100MHz Pentium, I could see only half the letters on each line of the capturedscreens.

Making It All Work Together
Now, for the challenge: solving the compatibility issues. Not all editingsoftware works with all cards on all platforms. The Smart Video Recorder worksbeautifully in Win95, but as of this writing, does not have NT drivers. ThePerception board works and integrates well with Speed Razor, which will run onIntel or Alpha. But Perception won't work with MCXpress; MCXpress works onlywith Targa boards, which have several levels and prices. Also, MCXpress lacks anAlpha version. Adobe Premiere is independent of the type of capture card, whichcontributes to the card's tremendous user acceptance.

Is a Standardized Format Desirable?
Nearly everyone who uses computers complains about compatibility: "Iwish word processor A used the same document format as word processor B."Or, "Why can't I import that information into my accounting program?"

Video file formats make other file incompatibility problems pale incomparison. Among the .avi formats, you'll find so many differences in the filesthat you spend a lot of time just trying to make things work together. Maybethese compatibility problems are the reason the video editing industry stillsells turnkey systems, which is typical in a market that hasn't matured. Untilall the manufacturers can get together, set standards, and apply them,cross-platform and cross-application compatibility is only a dream. Manycompanies, such as Avid Technologies and in:sync, create outstanding products,but see themselves as the only players in the market. They charge outrageousprices for their hardware and software, have inadequate support, and haveproprietary formats that are difficult to work with. This situation reminds meof AutoCAD.

The video editing market is ripe for a revolution. Software such as AdobePremiere is sufficient; but for hardware, I'm waiting for a company such as HPto step in and standardize the market and the drivers, and consolidate theoutput files as HP did with its laser printers. Maybe Microsoft's DirectShow andDirectDraw APIs and Active Streaming Format will force manufacturers tostandardize output.

The MCXpress and Targa solution turns your system into a turnkey editingsystem. These products are so closely integrated, they seem to have been madefor each other. Speed Razor gives you more video card options, because it useseither the Targa boards or the Perception board. It will also use differentsound cards.

I set up three systems: one with MCXpress and a Targa 2000 RTX; anotherwith Speed Razor, the Perception boards, and an A4V sound card; and a third withAdobe Premiere, working only with previously captured video and audio clips. Nowthe fun was beginning.

Setting Up Windows NT
Most video editing systems use dedicated hard disks for storing video clips.With the Perception card from DPS, the hard disk is connected directly to thecapture card. You don't format the disk with NT, but through the Perceptionsoftware. Although the disk is not NT formatted, you can see it and use it inExplorer and other applications. The drive is labeled P:, and you can copy andmove files back and forth from your system drive to the dedicated drive. Thiscapability makes the drive very simple to work with and provides the necessaryperformance to capture video. Although NT can use the drive, Disk Administratorcannot manage it. The Targa system and Adobe Premiere do not require a specialconnection for their data drives, but the companies recommend fast drivesdedicated to the capture and storage of video files. None of the software Itested let the system volume also act as a data drive.

The drivers for the audio and video capture cards have been a problem.Recently released drivers allow the use of high-end audio cards as system sounddevices, but when I use them, I can't play my music CD-ROMs on my system. TheIntel Smart Video Recorder III lacks an NT driver, as does the DV Master fromFAST Multimedia. Without NT drivers, the capture process has to run through aWin95 system, and I have to endure all the attendant problems.

The only thing I needed to change about my NT system software during mytests was the amount of virtual memory. Even with 96MB of RAM, I had problemsrunning the different programs until I changed the size of my paging file. TheNT default is RAM plus 11MB. For optimum application performance, virtual memoryis usually set 1.5 times to 2 times greater than the amount of RAM.Surprisingly, for capture, DPS recommends a paging file smaller than the amountof RAM--8MB less than the physical RAM. Capturing data through a capturecard requires the ability to write at least 4.5MBps to 5MBps. Using a pagingfile during capture makes matching that rate difficult. I made the requestedchange, and the capture functions worked very well.

However, the paging file was insufficient when I was using the editingprograms. When I put a 500MB paging file on my data drive, everything smoothedout, the performance increased, and reliability was no longer a problem.

I set the paging file to 88MB while I was capturing video, and added a500MB paging file on another drive while I was editing. This setup works well,but this configuration is a hassle.

DV Format vs. Motion JPEG
Most of the capture cards that feed analog or digital video into the PC useMotion JPEG, which combines many .jpg files, one for each frame. You then editthese files and process them for output. The system then changes the format to.avi or QuickTime (.mov). This change makes editing a breeze, because you candeal with each frame independently of the others. Nonlinear editing uses thismethod. In fact, most nonlinear editing systems must translate any other formatto Motion JPEG before editing can occur. The biggest challenge associated withhardware that turns video into Motion JPEG is that the same hardware cannotcapture video for live broadcasting.

One system can accept a pure Digital Video (DV) signal and use it, withoutmodification, for nonlinear editing. DV Master from FAST Multimedia lets youcapture, transfer, and edit in DV format. Because DV is the product's nativeformat, you can speed up the process, maybe even to the point of going live froma DV camera into the PC. I couldn't test this capability because it wasn't yetreleased for NT.

The Shoot
I finished the Windows NT Solutions Directory, and I scheduled a videoshoot. Eight takes later, I completed the shooting and had the pieces I neededto put together a dynamite clip.

Editing
In every editing software product I worked with, only the clip on thehighest numbered track is visible. In other words, you will see what is on track1, as long as nothing is on track 2. If track 2 is nontransparent video, youwill not see what is on track 1. If you want a title on the top of a video clip,you put the video clip on track 1 and the title on a transparent background ontrack 2. If you want to switch to a different clip, such as a picture of thecomputer screen, you can simply lay the screen shot on a higher track number.You don't need to delete the section of the first clip that was behind the newclip.

In MCXpress, with its limitations of two video tracks and up to four audiotracks, you set the video clips with precise edit points end-to-end on onetrack, and then put the effects and titles on the other track. With unlimitedtracks for both audio and video in Speed Razor, you have more flexibility in howyou layer your video and audio tracks, which is helpful. In Adobe Premiere, youget a compromise, with two standard video tracks, a transition track, andunlimited superimpose tracks (S tracks). The S tracks are for creating multiplelayers with transparent backgrounds and titles.

I took the clips and captured them with the DPS Perception card and thenthe Targa board. Each card comes with proprietary software just to facilitatethe capturing process. After I made the correct settings for the audio and videocapturing, the editing was easier than using a VCR.

Next, I arranged and trimmed the clips, and added my titles and graphics. Iadded my captured screens from HyperCam, laid them over the video track, andleft the audio track untouched.

Rendering and Exporting to AVI
The process of rendering takes a set of audio clips, video clips, graphics,and effects, and puts it all into one video that you can watch from one end tothe other. You can click any place on the time line and see what your video willlook like at this point. This function required more time than nearly any otherprocess. This area is where NT and serious horsepower really kick in. Put a dualPentium Pro or Dual Pentium II on the task, and you'll cut your time in half.

Usually, when you are going to export the final project to an .avi file,the system renders the video again, sets all the clips to the same size, setsall the audio to the same values (mono, stereo, KHz, etc.), compresses the wholevideo, and then writes it to your hard disk. Depending on the compressionroutines, this process can take hours. Obviously, if you are going to usevideotape as your final product, you can skip the .avi file and just dump theproject to tape.

Recommendations
No matter which way you decide to go, I have some recommendations for makingvideo editing much easier. First, get heavy-duty hardware if you are going to doserious work. Don't use anything less than a 200MHz Pentium Pro with 64MB of RAMand at least five PCI slots, plus two or more ISA/EISA slots that the PCI boardswill not cover up. Hard disk space is also a real necessity. A 9GB A/V drive isthe minimum I recommend, plus your 2GB to 4GB system drive. Make sure yoursystem has plenty of drive bays for internal drives, because they are far lessexpensive.

All three video editors performed well, once I got them fully configured.An advantage to the Avid MCXpress is that an editor who has used a Mac versionwill have almost no learning curve. However, even editors with extensiveexperience will have a minor learning curve with Speed Razor.

Keep in mind that if you are starting from scratch, all of these systemsrequire a serious time commitment. Video editing is not word processing. Youmust practice to acquire the necessary technical skills and to master theprograms' intricacies.

Which product will I use next time? The answer depends on the project. You can't go wrong with any of them. I like Speed Razor's unlimited layers of audio and video, which make pulling video from different sources and adding multiple effects unbelievably easy. However, the titling and onscreen graphics creation in MCXpress outshines Speed Razor's. Even so, I might use Adobe Premiere, which is the easiest to set up and learn and has all the power I need.