Tech Question: digital video and editing

[AlohaDawg]

I know some  of you have to be into this stuff, so I need a little help.

Assume that I have ~$10,000 to spend on equipment to start a home-based business that involves creating short custom video.

I need to know what kind of equipment/associates I would need to do the following (this is in the best case):

1) Capture 10-15 minutes of video and still images including sound at the highest quality possible (in a static, high-light, interior environment)

2) Be capable of editing the video, adding music, text, voiceovers

3) Be able to produce DVDs that would be difficult to duplicate or extract files from

4) Store the complete files in physical or electronic format for future reference, including potential updates or for re-ordering of DVDs

5) Be able to create the DVDs in formats readable overseas, particularly Japan and the Phillippines

6) This enterprise in no way involves depiction of sexual activity or unclad people of any age, gender or persuasion.


Constructive comments will be appreciated, after 3 days let the discourse degrade as it may...

[jough]

I'll try to address each of these points, AD.

Assume that I have ~$10,000 to spend on equipment to start a home-based business that involves creating short custom video.

You can do a lot with 10 large.  I think you can do everything you want (except as noted below) with about half that (for equipment).

1) Capture 10-15 minutes of video and still images including sound at the highest quality possible (in a static, high-light, interior environment)

When you say "at the highest quality possible" I'll assume you don't mean Digital HD, which would cost about $25,000 for just the camera.

You can get a REALLY GOOD DV Camcorder with pro features for under $1,000 now.

2) Be capable of editing the video, adding music, text, voiceovers

I like Avid Express for quick video editing, but Slink has far more experience with this than I do.  Please also note that I believe he and I are mostly Windows users.  There are other options for a Mac if you want to go that way.

3) Be able to produce DVDs that would be difficult to duplicate or extract files from

I don't think this is possible given the current DVD technology.  The problem is that I assume you'd want these DVDs to play on stand-alone players as well as PCs?  If so, you're limited to the copy protection and security that DVD players offer.  Which is to say: none.

I'm not sure why this would be an issue - you don't want clients being able to make their own copies?  

There hasn't been a copy protection scheme yet that hasn't been broken.  I would recommend you LET THIS ONE GO for your own peace of mind.  You'll also save yourself a lot of expense if you don't chase the dream of trying to make something uncopyable.  Usually you'll just make it totally unplayable and piss off the people you're hoping will give you money.

4) Store the complete files in physical or electronic format for future reference, including potential updates or for re-ordering of DVDs

You could store the DVDs on a series of large hard drives, but of course you could also just keep a copy of the DVDs (offsite) for this purpose.  Just make sure you keep more than one copy in case one of the discs goes bad.

5) Be able to create the DVDs in formats readable overseas, particularly Japan and the Phillippines

Keep in mind that there are two major video standards for TeeVees - NTSC (North America and Japan, and Some of Korea) and PAL (everywhere else).

So Japan and the Phillipines use different video standards.  But if you keep video masters you can make different DVDs for different regions using the same source files.  It's just a matter of encoding.

Also, the whole "region coding" thing is optional - if you're authoring your own discs you can set them to region 0, which is playable everywhere (alternately, you could region encode them to a specific region, but this is again easily defeatable).

6) This enterprise in no way involves depiction of sexual activity or unclad people of any age, gender or persuasion.

Then what good is it?

Without knowing what you're wanting to do it's hard to say what you should do, but generally to edit videos and create DVDs (I'll assume you're doing one and two offs, and not wanting to have thousands pressed - if so, you'll want to quadrupal your budget).

A high-end PC, preferably with at least 4Gb main memory, two 3Ghz hyperthreaded processors, a few 300Gb hard drives, DVD burner(s), etc.  

I'm going to say you can get that for $3,000.
Video editing software: $500-$1000
Digital Video Camera (w/ firewire interface): $1000
Extra HD Storage (Firewire or USB2): $300 each per 300Gb (I recommend Maxtor's OneTouch drives - they're stackable and are quiet, cool (temp-wise), and reliable) - figure two or three of these to start - easily added onto later.

So for equipment alone figure around $5,000 max, and that's only if you want dream equipment that will make your job a happy one.

[slink]

Jough covered it prretty well really.
As far as editing for video, either Avid (who I would recommend considering they own Digidesign who make by far the best audio equipment) or something like Adobe AfterEffects/Premiere which I have used and know most of my friends who do a lot of semi-professional video editing use.
As far as audio and music for adding to film, i would have to go with Pro Tools. You can import video and have it setup in time with whatever you then add, and while you need hardware to use Pro Tools, you can get both PCI cards (more expensively) or firewire or usb equipment cheaper. I have the 002 which is firewire, which has 8 channels in, at the highest quality you could want (up to 24bit, 96Khz) for just over $2000. It is at the higher end. You can get an Mbox for about $600 maybe, which is 2-in 2-out, and again supports high quality. It's USB. Both these allow you to run Pro Tools (though without the PCI cards you can't run the stupid high end version, though I doubt you'd need the couple of features it has).
On a machine set up for video editing, Pro Tools would run like a dream too. It's what all the sound work on most big movies, including soundtrack and effects is done in. You can setup and add the music in real time, using both plugins and non-linear recorded audio.

You could go cheaper and get one of the Motu USB mixers that supports non linear recording, but then youd have to go with software like Logic Audio or something, which for video would have less integration.
It may all sound really complicated as well, but it's really all fairly simple, and Pro Tools is remarkably easy to pick up. I have already played around with video in PT, as like I've mentioned, the short film my friend made is about to arrive for me to do exactly what you are talking about - some possible sound work (although now I'm working someone else may be tackling some of that) and composing the soundtrack.

Apologies for the sprawling post. I'm literally going to bed now. Anyhow, if you want more info, I can give you pretty much whatever you're after on that front, and in terms of video editing I can talk to the Director and DP of the film for more in-depth info you may be after. They did all the edit on computers, from DV, and the quality is easily comparable to film, and the cost is phenomenally lower.

[AlohaDawg]

Cool! And I could let go of the copying thing, but I'd prefer to sell people copies rather than make it easy to dupliate it themselves. The obvious alternative is to make them more expensive.

I haven't really decided going Mac or PC but for whatever reason artsy folks seem to groove on Macs.

$5,000 is a very good number to start at.

I look forward to Slink's input as well.

Thanks!

[jough]

Looks like you and Slink posted at the same time.

Also, this is something most people overlook, but you really REALLY do not want to use whatever live sound is recorded on the crappy DV camera mic.  Spend the $100 and get a decent boom for recording people, and maybe a Shure desk mic for doing ADR or voiceover narration (as I said, I have no idea what your project will entail and am trying to cover most of the bases).

Pro Tools is a good recommendation - it may be overkill for, oh, MOST uses, but damn, it's a nice system.

I'd also recommend spending the $80-100 to get the Avid keyboard that makes most editing tasks MUCH easier, if you go the Avid route.

Premier is decent (CNN uses it) but I think it has a steeper learning curve, and I found it far less intuitive than Avid's system.

I could probably hook you up with a copy of Premier, though.  I have one sitting here and I'll probably never use it again.