Amateur Videographer turned Professional Video Editing Tutorial Publisher

An amateur camcorder owner since 1986, Richard was always unhappy with the tedious "home movie" feel that resulted from watching tapes straight from the camcorder. Early copy-edit attempts from camcorder to VCR were some improvement, but extremely tedious to perform.

"I'd previously done a small amount of cine editing, and I wanted to be able to cut video shots in the same way, as well as be able to overlay a soundtrack onto the final edit. What I wanted couldn't be done without a dual edit deck, and I couldn't justify that kind of money on a hobby".

As a professional computer engineer, Richard became interested in how computers could

be used with video. When digitizing capture hardware became available at a reasonable price, he decided to set himself up with a PC equipped for desktop editing.

"That was back in 1996, and I managed to get one of the first consumer-grade capture cards second-hand. Even so it cost me around $300 US, and the P166 I fitted it into with 16MB RAM and a 2.5 GB hard drive was pretty cutting edge too. Even so, it was hard work getting results good enough just for VHS tape!"

That capture card, a FAST F60, came bundled with version 2 of what was to evolve into Ulead's MediaStudio Pro (version 7 released March 2003).

"As an experienced computer user and programmer, I was accustomed to all sorts of different software, but video editing was still an entirely new experience. All kinds of Windows tuning tricks were needed to get everything to run reliably. I wondered how non-technical consumers would possibly be able to get results."

After writing some articles for the newly-published UK magazine Computer Video, Richard was asked to write a multi-part illustrated tutorial on version 5 of MediaStudio Pro, which had just been released. "It was rewarding to be able to pass onto new users some of the techniques it had taken me a lot of trial and error to discover."

The tutorial ran to 11 issues, and was so well received that Richard subsequently published the material as an e-book. He has since updated it for each new release, and the latest edition covers MediaStudio Pro version 7.

"As a videographer I'm still a pure amateur, but I always like to get the best out of the equipment I use, be it a camera, PC, or software. I always like to find out everything that you can make a program do, and MediaStudio can do so much that I get great satisfaction both applying that knowledge to my own personal videos, and passing it onto other users through tutorials and training.”

"Hardware has advanced so far in the seven years since that first system, it's great now having ample power and disk space in a standard machine. MediaStudio Pro has made great strides too, both in power and ease of use, but editing video is still a new skill for most people. Now it's accessible to so many. I like to feel I can help them get up to speed."