It seems like an easy question, and when posed as such those asking it clearly want make & model info so they can just add one to their wish list or pull the trigger and purchase it.  Purchasing a PC for almost any need should take a little more thought than that though, especially when it comes to multimedia processing needs.

Review Application Requirements

Understanding the hardware requirements for the software applications you intend to leverage is key.  Minimum specs, GPU & I/O driver support of course, and more should be taken into consideration.  This is also a great time to consider improvements throughout your multimedia workflows, looking for opportunities to save even more time with a new configuration (e.g. transcoding, data transfer, storage & backup efficiencies, etc.).

Users of Microsoft's free movie editing and photo management programs in Windows Essentials received a treat Wednesday as the company released new versions of the offerings for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

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Have you heard?  Adobe has long supported hardware accelerated playback in Premiere Pro, but now you can also leverage it for encoding H.264 & H.265 and literally save hours when encoding (in some cases)!

Check it out yourself, if you're using Premiere Pro.  Make it a great day my friends!

I posted a new page last week under our Professional Community menu called Free DME & FVA Tools. Hope you find it helpful.

BARCELONA, Spain--Google today unveiled Movie Studio, a new application for the upcoming Honeycomb era of Android tablets that lets people edit videos.

The software, which Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt announced during a speech here at Mobile World Congress, is designed to expand on a phone's abilities to capture imagery.

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In an effort to make it easier for YouTube users to make changes to their videos after uploading them, YouTube is rolling out a brand new video editor.

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Photoshop has grown into a very powerful and capable platform for working with video since the capability was introduced in CS3 Extended. I’ve dabbled with it over the years, but despite its impressive capabilities I always end up going with what I know best, relying on other video editing tools for most video related tasks. Well, this old dog is always trying to learn new tricks that improve efficiencies in my various personal and professional workflows, so I’ve been making an effort to explore Photoshop’s video capabilities more often.

Lossless trimming is the ability to trim, cut or extract segments of audio & video without re-encoding the original multimedia streams, maintaining both the original frames/samples and their related metadata. It is a process as old as digital video itself, and one that can be extremely helpful when dealing with hundreds or thousands of hours of digital video evidence for a case.

Reduce file size, reduce duration and maintain the original frames & quality. Bonus, the process is even faster than traditional editing, as you don't have to wait for the video to be re-encoded!

Spatial vs. Temporal Compression

Spatial (Intraframe) compression is applied to each video frame independently, treating each frame as a stand-alone image. This is the type of compression leveraged by high-end video production facilities as it provides superior picture quality and efficiencies in the editing process. Every frame is a key frame.

This article appears in the February/March issue of Streaming Media magazine.

Unless you intend to only stream live video to the web, you need video editing software. To be specific, you need a nonlinear, computer-based editing system that can ingest, edit, and then save video files for distribution online or via DVD/Blu-ray.

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Until about two years ago, it wasn't that often that I’d encounter Variable Frame Rate (VFR) video evidence, unless of course the case included video recorded by mobile phones. Times, they are a changing my friend.

DVR/NVR manufacturers are leveraging the advantages of VFR more often these days. And why shouldn't they be, especially when we’re seeing even the high-end professional video recording equipment start to use VFR more frequently. Throw in the want/need to get to Ultra HD before the next guy, and suddenly you've got a decent argument for VFR.

"VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images."

In planning video production sessions for the November LEVA conference, LEVA would like to know what system you use to produce videos. For example, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Avid, Adobe Premiere, etc. It will help us tailor subject areas that helps ensure the best possible training is provided.

Please direct your responses and any other suggested production topics to Mr. Jan Garvin, LEVA Training VP at training@leva.org.