Ever since I bought my first MacBook Pro, bundled with iMovie of course, I've become somewhat of a home video editing fanatic. I enjoy it. And since I've been in the post production space for a while now (and used to work for Media 100), I already understood the basics of NLEs and how to edit on a timeline. So apps like iMovie were a breeze for me. I have an old miniDV cam that uses the old miniDV tapes, and for me, it works really well.
I'd create short videos of the kids' birthdays, a holiday, an outing -- usually editing down 30 minutes of raw video to 5 - 7 minutes, or to the length of the song I chose to accompany the video. It's a formula that works for me, and to the delight of friends and family, they look forward to my videos (at least I think they do!).
So I was pleased when I would get phone calls, people looking for advice. The conversations, though, have been sounding something like this, "I just bought a new HDV (or ACVHD) video camera and am really psyched to start editing video. So how do I start?!" And it was always at this point that I had to give them the bad news. You can't edit video shot on those cameras, at least not easily. Then I'd have to get a little technical, explaining the woes of editing compressed vs. uncompressed video. They'd glaze over, but walk away basically disappointed with the knowledge that they had just dropped a ton of money on a camera and can't create the kind of videos they really wanted.
But that changes today. I started working with a company called CineForm last week. And I was pretty excited that my first task was to announce an inexpensive software application targeted at consumers who own the very cameras my friends have been buying - HDV and AVCHD video cameras! For $129, they can purchase this software, and quickly and easily convert their videos into editable formats. Very cool!
The product is called Neo Scene. It comes in both Mac and Windows versions, and as mentioned, it's cheap! CineForm has been around a while, but they're not known in consumer circles really. They've been developing compression workflow technologies for the Hollywood set, but decided to extend that same professional caliber technology to a consumer-oriented product.
It launches today. Check it out here and start editing!
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