Little Digital Video Book, The
On March - 31 - 20105 COMMENTS
- ISBN13: 9780321572622
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
One of the more frustrating aspects of buying a new digital video camera for consumers is trying to discover not only how it works, but how to shoot good movies with it right away. For most of us, we just want to turn on the camera and go, without spending too much time sorting through dense jargon and video editing software manuals. Here to guide the troubled newcomer to the exciting world of digital video is The Little Digital Video Book, 2e. This friendly, … More >>
The writing style of this how-to guide is not all reader-friendly, especially if you want to read it the night before shooting your best friend’s wedding. It’s way too wordy. Hard for the reader to pick up the useful stuff — unless you scored 1000 out of 800 on the SAT verbal test.
Rating: 1 / 5
Great Book ….. !!! Easy to understand…. NO JUNK info …. worth buying !!!
Rating: 5 / 5
This is book offers a simple and practical method for actually using all that cool video and computer stuff you either own or have been thinking about getting. After years of making films in Hollywood, and teaching film editors how to use the new style of editing possible with computers, I developed this method for myself, for the masive amount of personal videos I shoot and edit.
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Everyone who tries this method is floored by the power such simple filmmaking princples can give you. All I can say is “try it.” You may be surprised. I hope so.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you have a non-mini DV camera (HDD, mem card, etc.) you’ll skip a good part of this book. It lingers about the technical difficulties of transferring a mini DV video to the computer, and also about storing mini DVs. That may be useful for mini DV users, but wasn’t for me.
I bought the second edition, that briefly mentions that there are another, newest media being used, but doesn’t give any useful advice about this – on the contrary, seems to be a bit wary of these, doesn’t add anything that an average computer user’d know. That part looks like a simple footnote to the previous edition.
There are some good advice bits, and the general tone is home-video-oriented as proposed, but most parts (as editing in a home computer) lack more in-depth discussion.
Overall, though you can learn something from this book, I’d recommend looking for a more comprehensive one or even going after good tutorials on the web.
Rating: 3 / 5
The Little Digital Video Book is practical and down-to-earth, but also charming. Rubin clearly knows the traps that most of us fall into — never finishing our projects, not discarding enough in editing, trying to do everything, failing to shoot all the elements of a good little video. And it’s the good little video — he calls it a video sketch — that this is all about: something you can finish in a couple of hours and enjoy… as well as learn from.
Unlike most books on basic video use, Rubin doesn’t over-emphasize the mechanics and he doesn’t talk as though your DV camera is the first step towards a Hollywood career. Instead of telling you how various pieces of equipment (microphones, tripods, stabilizers, …) could move you closer to professional quality, he actually *discourages* you from thinking that equipment can substitute for thought.
Rubin is a strong advocate of tape over memory cards and built-in disk. He is more comfortable — and who can blame him in some ways? — storing his footage and finished videos on tape than on hard drives and DVDs. But tape has its price, too. He spends many pages talking about the mechanics of shooting with tape (not breaking time code), logging it, and importing it into an editor. Part of this is perhaps that when the book was written (not that long ago!), a 1TB drive cost around $400, while now it’s more like $100, so having a second for back-up is not a big deal.
This is a great little book, and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5