 Introduction How Roxio VideoWave 5 Works • Ideas and Content • What is Digital Video? Note: Features described in red text are unavailable or reduced in this version of Roxio VideoWave. For information on how to obtain the full version of Roxio VideoWave 5, please contact Roxio Software Corp. at www.mgisoft.com. These are exciting times for video on the PC. Newer, more powerful processors allow full-motion video. Large, fast hard disks allow bigger, higher-quality video files to be produced and stored. High-speed Internet connections let you quickly upload and download video to and from the Web. Roxio VideoWave has been setting the standard for years for PC video authors, helping novice and advanced users create superb video presentations, complete with titles, special effects, transitions, audio mixing, video mixing and overlay, and more. Now we’ve raised the standard again with Roxio VideoWave 5 – the complete PC and Internet video solution! Roxio VideoWave 5 has a bold new interface that is designed to take advantage of powerful new features while remaining fast and intuitive. Our acclaimed Storyline lets you put video clips in sequential order for easy production. The Library lets you view thumbnail representations of clips, files and effects. The Viewscreen contains handy control buttons for video preview. Every menu and button command is designed with one purpose in mind – to make it easy for you to produce great-looking video!  How Roxio VideoWave 5 works Use your computer’s capture card to transfer video files from tape to your hard disk. A capture card plus sound card is used to capture video and audio from your camcorder, TV tuner or VCR. An IEEE 1394 (FireWire) board is used to capture digital video and audio together. Use the computer’s USB port to capture video from USB devices. Support for Analog and Digital Video (DV) Roxio VideoWave 5 lets you use and combine both formats seamlessly, utilizing your existing equipment while being ready for the latest generation of hardware. Because the data rate of raw video is quite high, the software used with the analog capture or IEEE 1394 card compresses the video as it is saved to disk to reduce the file size. For analog capture, the compression ratio depends on the software driver settings. DV is captured at a fixed compression ratio. Video editing power at your fingertips Whatever source you use, you can view live video before and during capture. Once you have captured the video to your hard disk, use Roxio VideoWave 5’s full range of audio and video editing tools to edit the footage to your liking. Play back on the Viewscreen, edit and rearrange clips, apply effects, add titles and music, then view your creation. When you are finished, produce your video to the file format of your choice. Use the file as-is or output it to videotape for even greater versatility. Roxio VideoWave 5 offers almost unlimited production options for your video. You can specify frame size and rate, file format, and compression. There are also pre-made video production templates included with the program, each designed for a different end use. The templates cover such intended video destinations as transferring to regular VHS tape, S-VHS tape, CD video, DV, Internet e-mail, Web site publishing, and more. You can even create and save your own video template settings for specialized needs. Roxio VideoWave 5 Features Here is a partial list of the many features found in Roxio VideoWave 5: Motion video, image, and audio capture from analog and DV sources Text, video mixing, transitions, special effects Real-time video preview of live video feed and capture Produce to AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DV, Real video, or WMV (ASF files) Smart DV for faster production to DV files Output video directly to a connected VCR or DV device What’s New in Roxio VideoWave 5: Scene detection for automatic scene splitting of video clips TimeWarp your video by speeding up or slowing down the action New video templates, including those for producing Real video and MVW Publish video to online services on the Web Brand new content – intro clips and matching, keyable overlays on dozens of subjects: home, business, kids, vacation, occasions, events, and many, many more Ideas and Content There are so many things you can do with video using Roxio VideoWave 5. Here are a few ideas: Edit your own videos using source material from your camcorder, VCR or television Add music or a commentary to an existing video Capture still images from a home video, then use a program such as PhotoSuite to edit and print the image Capture sound alone, such as band music from a birthday party Produce a video presentation for your business Include video on your Web page Send video via e-mail to friends and family Use any of the dozens of professional templates supplied with Roxio VideoWave 5: intro clips and matching, keyable overlays on dozens of subjects: home, business, kids, vacation, occasions, events, and many, many more Roxio VideoWave 5 contains quite a few Storyboards too. These series of video clips can be loaded into the software, and provide the basis for a shooting list for a wide variety of video projects: from vacations and parties, to sports, business, and professional interests. Use them as guides until you feel confident enough to create your own. Video produced on the PC opens up a whole new world for your creativity. Roxio VideoWave 5 can help you realize your dreams! What is Digital Video? If it is stored in a file format that computers can read, video is in digital form. Unlike analog video, where the data is stored as a waveform signal on tape, digital video is stored as a sequence of ones and zeros. The storage media can be magnetic tape, CD, DVD, or a hard disk. Analog video Some examples of analog video are traditional broadcast television (either over the air or via cable), VHS VCRs and camcorders, and VHS-C, 8mm, and Hi-8 camcorders. To use the video from these devices, your computer must be equipped with a capture card, which converts the analog signal to digital for storage on the computer’s hard disk. DV video The latest camcorder format is DV, which stands for Digital Video. The video signal created by these devices is in digital format to begin with, and is usually stored on DV tapes (such as Mini DV and Digital 8). DV cameras perform the digitizing, and an IEEE 1394 card and cable installed in a PC are used to transfer the video to and from the camera. Video Compression Video data in its raw form (from either analog or DV sources) can consume many megabytes of storage space for just a few seconds of video. For this reason, compression is usually employed when capturing video. Besides reducing the storage requirements of video, compression has the added benefit of reducing the data rate of playback. This becomes important if the video is played back on hard drives or CD-ROMs that may have a limited data transfer rate. If the data rate of the video exceeds the transfer rate of the playback device, some frames of the video will be lost and audio quality will suffer. When producing your video to its final form, you can sometimes compress the file further, or apply other space saving adjustments. For example, this can include reducing the frame size or rate, and changing stereo audio to mono. Even with compression, a few minutes worth of larger scale video (designed for VHS hi-fi tape or better) can easily consume gigabytes of storage space. A very large, fast hard drive is therefore required to produce these files. Video files with smaller frame sizes and lower frame rates (such as those designed for uploading to the Internet) require much less storage space. For suggested applications and data rates for the various formats, see the section on Production options. |