Digital Video on the PC: Video Production on Your Multimedia PC

Rating:
Summary: Excellent hands-on guide even tho a few years old
Review: I am halfway through this book (in an afternoon!)and I already feel familiar with this field, but it helped to do a bit of homework prior to reading this. It's very practical, not theoretical, but it is a few years old and much has changed in hard/software since he wrote this. An excellent investment for the money. I would buy an updated version if available. His writing style is engaging, funny, easy to read.

Rating:
Summary: A very good book for those new to Digital Video
Review: The book is easy to read and understand. It is somewhat dated regarding the PC platforms that are recommended but the information regarding Digital Video is still very current. There are new capture cards on the market but they perform most of the same functions but at higher datarates.

Mr. Bunzel does an excellent job of describing in simple language the terms that are used in this field. He also does a good job of explaining how all the components of the computer interact to produce high quality digital video. He explains the different types of video files that there are, Quicktime, AVI, MPEG, animation files, etc. There is also information on the "why" and "how" of compressing video.

There are chapters devoted to various types of application software such as video editing (Adobe Premiere 4.2). They cover how it works and give some examples of projects.

The book covers most of the major reasons why customers want to use Digital Video. Users capture video for a wide variety of reasons. Some of them are to: produce video tapes, create animations, create video files for web sites, putting presentation graphics to tape, etc.

People are using Digital Video to create videos in a variety of format (computer, CD ROM, Web, and tape) and this book is a good introduction on what is possible to do.