Book Reviews

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Book and DVD Reviews (educational stuff to help you learn how to create Internet movies and videos)

Here are some great books & manuals about Software Programs for Video Editing

The Focal Easy Guide to Premiere Pro by Tim Kolb - This well illustrated, full color book tells you all you need to know to get up and running quickly using Adobe Premiere Pro to achieve professional results. It covers the essentials, so you can apply the knowledge to your project immediately. All the important areas are covered: set up, the interface, video capture, title design, editing, effects, mixing audio, exporting to DVD, tape and the Net, and integration with other Adobe products like PhotoShop and AfterEffects. It also includes real world tips and workflow suggestions to help you properly leverage the power of Premiere. An invaluable first read for users of all levels who want to achieve professional results. Tim Kolb is an Emmy Award-winning director. Get Focal Easy Guide to Premiere Pro : For New Users and Professionals from Amazon

How to Use Adobe Premiere 6.5 by Doug Dixon is the fastest and easiest way to get started with Premiere, whether you are new to video editing or stepping up to Premiere's professional

features from a consumer video editing tool. With straightforward step-by-step descriptions, and illustrated with color screenshots, this book gets you going right away and shows you how to effectively use Premiere to create and share your own polished video productions, with titles, transitions and special effects. If you are a newcomer to video editing, you can use this book as a tutorial, as it describes each major feature in Premiere, step by step. If you are moving up to the full capabilities of Premiere, and as you get more experienced with video editing, you also can use this book as a quick reference to learn new features to create more interesting and polished productions. To make editing even easier, this book will show you how to use Premiere with a DV digital video camcorder to import, edit, and save your video in high-quality digital format. And to share your creations, it also shows you how to save your video productions, especially in streaming Web video formats to post on a Web site and share across the Internet.

Premiere Pro for Windows: Visual QuickPro Guide By Antony Bolante ISBN: 0-321-21346-7, $24.99, 584 pp. Adopting the step-by-step, visual approach that's become the hallmark of Peachpit's popular Visual QuickPro series, this volume will have you editing full-length videos, complete with titles, transitions, and special effects, in record time. In the process you'll learn about all that's new in Premiere: three-point color correction, multiple timelines, a new audio mixer, and more. The concepts may be complex, but the instruction is crystal-clear: direct, concise language complemented by time-saving tips and plenty of visual aids.

As the title indicates, this is mostly about using Adobe Premiere to edit and create videos for web distribution. However, even if you are using other computer editing programs, you will be able to pick some very good tips and ideas. If you are an experienced videographer, you should read his tips about shooting for the web and then go directly to the meet of this book, how to compress video for the Internet. In addition to providing excellent tips for compressing using Adobe Premiere, he also covers compressing for QuickTime, RealOne and Windows Media player. The last two sections of the book cover how to design and create web sites, pages and players for streaming video and how to configure and set up your site to actually stream. He includes details for the various formats including RealSystem, Windows Media and QuickTime. Strongly recommended. Buy this book now. Click here to buyCreating Web Video with Adobe Premiere from Amazon

Strongly recommended by many of our professional editors (even if you don't use FCP), "Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro" is an excellent handbook features over 425 pages and 9 chapters covering everything from the basics of production and what an editor does, the language of film and editing, the planning needed when preparing to edit, and the use of Final Cut Pro itself, from beginning through advanced techniques and effects like ramping the speed of a clip, compositing computer animation over a clip, picture-in-picture, color correction, creating titles, and much more.

This is a solid handbook for beginners who intend to get serious. Offering far more information than just how to use Final Cut Pro for editing, Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro is almost misnamed. While the focus of the book is editing, there is so much useful information here on pre-production and production that it is simply a wonderful handbook on how to make a good digital video film.

Rubin explains Final Cut Express' important tools and fancy features using specially prepared video that is included on the books companion DVD. In no time you'll be using the timeline, inserting and adjusting shots, and working with picture and sound separately to create professional results. Once you've mastered the basics, Rubin goes on to explain how to add music, titles, and special effects to your video and encourages you to think of new ways you can apply this powerful software to your personal and business projects. Its the perfect first book for someone just getting into Final Cut Express.

This CD package has been updated to include iMOvie2. Targeted to beginners, home videographers and business people who want to use their camcorder, Mac computer and the "free" bundled iMovie software, the CD starts with the basics of planning and pre-production, camcorder use and shooting, lighting and composition. It then moves into how to use iMovie to actually create video productions that can be shared on a computer, via the Internet or even burned onto a DVD or CD-ROM. Each section starts basic and then works its way up to more detailed, more sophisticated techniques, The CD is easy to follow - the language is clear, concise and even funny at times. In addition to providing a good quality intro to how to create your own movies, the CD also include s a few cool freebies like a storyboard design template for drawing out your movie before you start shooting. The DV Creators web site also includes a bunch of other instructional materials, as well as additional CDs and accessories for sale. Definitely worth the $29.95! .By the way, even though iMovie only works with Mac OS, the instructional CD plays on both Windows and Mac machines. www.dvcreators.net

"iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual" puts you on the fast track to quality filmmaking. The book covers every step of iMovie video production, from choosing and using a digital camcorder to burning the finished work onto DVDs. Videographers of all levels also gain a firm grounding in basic film technique. This new edition shows you how to bring in and send out movies, pictures, and sound; for example, you can import audio from iTunes and images from iPhoto, and create chapter markers in movies that automatically turn into scene selection menus in iDVD. In addition, the book examines and explains all the new visual effects, audio controls, and sound effects. It's an all-in-one crash course that will help you maximize your enjoyment with iMovie 3.

This authoritative and up-to-date guide provides:
-Essentials of film technique. While the camcorder and iMovie give you
the technical tools, this book offers a friendly guide to the artistic
side of professional-looking home movies.
-Editing basics. Part 2 of this book bursts with clever workarounds,
hidden features, and editing tricks from the Hollywood film world.
-Finding an audience. You can export your finished masterpiece back to
the tape for high-quality TV playback--or save it as a QuickTime movie
that you can post on a web page, email to friends, or burn as a Video
CD.
-Mastering DVDs. If your Mac has a SuperDrive, you can distribute your
movies at much higher quality than VHS tapes or QuickTime movies--by
creating your own Hollywood-style DVDs. Four all-new chapters cover
iDVD 3 in detail, including dozens of undocumented secrets for
extending the program's design tools.

Written by David Pogue, computer columnist for the New York Times, created the Missing Manual series. This book teaches you everything you need to know about using iMovie2 to create digital video productions on the Macintosh using the free (or almost free) iMovie2 software. In addition to providing a good training, it also includes tips and tricks not covered in Apple's official manuals and instructional books. It also includes tips for general use of camcorders. Click here to buy iMovie 2: The Missing Manual from Amazon

This guidebook to QuickTime is published by Friends of Ed and is credited to the work of eight authors. It covers a wide range of topics of interest to those who are seriously interested in authoring multimedia projects using QuickTime 5 and 6.

This is not a dummies book - it is targeted to the intelligent beginner with a background in multimedia and web authoring. It provides in-depth resources for designers looking to author interactive media, QTVR, DVD or Streaming QuickTime. Each chapter includes tutorials for those interested in pushing QuickTime's level of interactivity The book covers what QuickTime is and what it is not, how to use QuickTime to create everything from simple slide shows to full-time movies including use of SMIL, special effects and MPEG4; how to produce and use QuickTime Virtual Reality, Interactive Media, differing ways of deploying and distributing QuickTime productions, producing web videos including video lighting, capture and compression, and an overview of various tools for use in producing QuickTime and QuickTime Virtual reality productions. It also includes suggestions for authoring for film and DVD distribution.

The CD (Windows and Mac) includes all the materials required for the book's various projects, some cool real world examples of QuickTime authoring, as well as trial versions of third party software. You do need to invest in the $29 QuickTime Pro upgrade. This book is packed full of information. It is a bit dense at times and has a bit of an United Kingdom grammar versus the less formal writing we find in US manuals. Go to Click here for a sample chapter. BuyRevolutionary QuickTime Pro 5 & 6 from Amazon books.

Learning QuickTime 5 Pro with Sean Blumenthal is a CD-ROM-based tutorial developed for beginning - advanced QuickTime users. QuickTime is not only a rich

multimedia environment, but a highly effective authoring tool. This disc will walk you through how to use this authoring tool to create the multimedia experience you want to deliver, whether you are publishing your content to the Web or a CD-ROM. Topics covered include: Controlling media playback within QuickTime, Multi-Track editing within the QT player, creating chapter points for your media, localizing your media or adding special tracks for impaired audiences, creating 360o QuickTime VR, publishing your QuickTime media to the web the right way, and much more. Running Time: 3 hours. Buy Learning QuickTime 5 Pro from Amazon

Avid Xpress Pro for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide By James Monohan ISBN: 0-321-14597-6, $29.99, 712 pp. Long known for its professional-level video-editing workstations, Avid has finally brought its system to both Windows and Macintosh desktops. Beginning digital filmmakers who are looking to acquire a high degree of editing proficiency quickly and experienced editors who are making the switch from other editing software will find everything they need in this guide. Best of all, readers can apply the skills they acquire here to other Avid products, which share similar interfaces and a common file format. Focused, task-based instruction covers the entire video-editing process from the basics of getting a DV project rolling all the way to advanced editing techniques and methods of distributing the final product. Along the way, readers will find the meaty tips and enhanced graphics (with labels, arrows, and other annotations) that have become the hallmark of this popular series.

The Microsoft Movie Maker Handbook is much more than just a guide to how to use the

MovieMaker program that comes bundled with Windows ME and Windows XP. It provides a good all over education in how to create videos, starting with how to shoot, how to handle audio, how to structure a film or video so that it makes sense. The Handbook spends a lot of chapters on how to plan and coordinate a production so that your audience will enjoy watching it when it is completed. It covers various shooting patterns styles. It also includes a chapter on using the Internet to distribute your video which includes a good basic understanding of how Windows Media Server works. The MovieMaker program instructions start with the basic capture, save, trim and edit lessons and include more advanced audio design and titling with graphics lessons. The included CD includes a good selection of sample video and audio clips to experiment with, as well as several animation, imaging and production tools.
If you are using Windows ME or Windows XP, this book will teach you everything you need to know to produce and edit good-looking movies, especially if you are new to video.
Click here to buy Microsoft Windows Movie Maker Handbook from Amazon

For consumers who want to explore both video-editing and DVD authoring, there's now an affordable tool - Pinnacle Studio 8 ($99) - that merges video editing and DVD authoring. This book covers both - as well as the DV production technologies behind them.

In Pinnacle Studio 8 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, veteran journalist Jan Ozer tackles Pinnacle Studio 8 with step-by-step instructions, plenty of illustrations, and straightforward language. The guide initiates readers in the art and craft of digital video editing for streaming-media and DVD. Chapters on project planning and a primer on how to shoot good video for DVD and the Web precede Ozer's task-based instructions explaining every aspect of the program-from capturing and importing video to creating transitions and titles, and outputting the final product.

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