i need some help about...

[soulfilms]

i am so soooo lost in the business of digital camcorders. i don't know shit about firewire/capture cards/whatthefucks so here's the deal.

i have a pentium III 500 with 128RAM i have something wrong with my sound (either i'm too un-co to connect it properly or there's something wrong with it cause no sound comes out) and i would like to purchase a digital camera.

i'd like some advice on how much memory i would need, what editing suite would be the best, etc.

your help is greatly appreciated

[shirt]

You have enough memory... some might tell you to get 256 megs... BUT... it really depends on what you plan to render. Larger, more complex videos with complex sound tracks need more ram then lets say a lil song and dance.... makes sense. 128 megs is enough to do most productions.

There are so many editing suites to shoose from I am not going to get into it. For your P3 I recommend adobe premiere or Ulead Video Studio. HOWEVER, Adobe Premiere does allow you to do a lot more then Ulead. It really just depends on what you are looking to do. The best and easiest way to decide is through audio. How many tracks do you want... if it is more then two the go with Adobe. It can be found on the internet through the occassional warez site, or you can buy it for about 300$ canadian (i think?)

Another handy program is Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Paintshop Pro... Super for titles, etc... I recommend Jasc... but Photoshop and Premiere do go hand and hand.

Finally...
Search around online for a capture card. If you want Firewire (you MUST have a digital camera with firewire output) then your looking to spend between 100$ canadian and on up to 500$... it really depends on what software comes with it... BUT you can always find free versions of any program so that is not a worry.

If you do not a firewire camera, then look into spending about 200$ for a Video Capture card... I recommend an ATI All-In-Wonder card with 128 megs... but you can get away with spending under 40$ for a 8meg card.. mind you capture quality may be crappy and you WILL lose frames. (about half!)

Hope this was a help. Check out http://desktopvideo.about.com/compute/desktopvideo/

Good luck!
[email protected] http://www.satanspig.itgo.com

[soulfilms]

thank you so much shirt...it's clarified many things for me (which the sales attendent only served to muddle me up). i think i might get some extra RAM just to be on the safe side but fuck that's going to be a lot of spending on my half (adds up to be around $10 000-ok its australian dollars to you all but it's still expensive for me)! so i think my best bet is to be a cheapstake and pirate or download the software to save on $1 200 for adobe.

anyway...forget my rambling..thanks for the help!