Content area
Full Text
Non-Linear Editing Software and DVD Authoring Tools
When we first started developing the EMedia Buyer's Guide in summer 1998, DVD authoring was an expensive, esoteric art- practiced by a scant few authors and a proportional dearth of powerful but challenging tools. Non-linear digital video editing, though a wider and more varied practice-comparably mature and diversified, with a broader range of tool options, levels of users, and choice of applications-was barely on our radar screen. Back then, you didn't do any great service to die DVD authoring community by telling diem about video editing tools, nor vice versa-these were discrete specialties, at least in terms of die personnel and skill sets involved. The digital studio, in its current protean form, didn't really exist. And the idea of "DVD Authoring Software" and "Non-Linear Editing Software" as self-contained categories was problematic, since authoring and editing weren't jobs you could get done by simply adding software to your computer. Additional supporting hardware, in nearly every case, was essential to die task.
Today's fast and powerful PCs and Macs, with their multi-gigallertz, hyperthreaded, and dual processors, built-in Fire Wire connections (shaking bands with the now-universal MiniDV format), mammoth 7200RPM+ factory-installed hard drives, and built-in DVD Recorders, come with everything you need to edit and author-you just have to pick die right tool to fulfill your...