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THE BEST BOOKS ON
VIDEO CREATION & EDITING
in ADOBE VIDEO COLLECTION
Reviewed by D'Lynn Waldron, PhD. ©2007
Member of BAFTA, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts
THESE REVIEWS MAY BE FREELY REPRODUCED
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Symphony
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The falling price of digital video cameras with 3CCD, for HD and for 24P, for digital tape, and for computer hardware and software have made professional quality work possible on a low budget for students and beginning film makers. It also makes it possible for established film makers to do projects that the studios would not finance on a film stock budget. I am a member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television Arts) and I have had interesting discussions with people like Steven Soderberg about the aesthetic differences between movies shot on film and in digital. (Virtually everything is now edited in digital.)
For Windows users, the some of the programs of choice, particularly After Effects, are contained in the Adobe Video Collection.
A big advantage of the Adobe Video Collection over Final Cut is the marvelous integration of all the Adobe Video Collection programs, allowing you to move back and forth between them when doing a project's various tasks.
The keystone of Adobe's Video Collection of products is Premiere Pro 1.5 for editing, which comes bundled the associated programs After Effects 6.5 for titling and other effects, Audition 1.5 for sound, Encore DVD to author DVDs, and Adobe Photoshop CS2 to create the graphics including layers that can be imported for animations.
The Adobe Video Collection comes in two versions
Standard contains Premiere, Audition, Encore and After Effects Standard. US$999.
Professional contains Premiere, Audition, Encore, After Effects Professional and Photoshop CS2. US$1,499. There are various upgrade options for both versions of the Video Collection
http://www.adobe.com/products/dvcoll/main.html
The Adobe site has a marvelous Tryout option for all their programs, but you will need a broadband connection to download them:
http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jsp
THE SOUND EDITING PROGRAMS DIGITAL PERFORMER, LOGIC, and CUBASE
There is much debate about programs for editing sound and for creating music- some programs a better for one thing and some for another.
I am a Mac person, but I had been using Audition for sound, because Apple's Soundtrack is just a big brother of Garage Band and we record symphony orchestras in super fidelity 24-bit/96kHz. However, neither Audition, nor Soundtrack are used by many professional sound people or composers.
Pro Tools was the program of choice for sound editing in movies and television, but it has been surpassed in many ways by other programs.
DIGITAL PERFORMER from Mark of the Unicorn is an integrated MIDI and audio sequencer used for studio recording, film scoring, live performance, and remixing. It is now Tiger compatable. Mark of the Unicorn is an excellent company I have known for many years, which is now more commonly known by it's initials MOTU
www.motu.com www.motu.com/products/software/
LOGIC from Apple is a program popular with composers. www.apple.com/logicpro/
CUBASE from Steinberg is a cross-platform program popular with composers. www.steinberg.de/
A caution for digital videographers:
Several years ago I was enthusing with Michael Apted (Bond movie director and President of the Directors Guild, and maker of the great documentary series Seven Up tracing the lives of various children in Britain from the age of seven to now almost 50) about how wonderful it was going to be for him to shoot his award-winning documentaries digitally and not be limited by the cost of film. His first digital project was 'Marriage in America'. The next time we talked he told me he had learned a great lesson. You cannot just go out and shoot everything in sight. You have to plan a digital project as carefully as if you were paying for film, or you will be overwhelmed in the editing room.
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ADOBE CLASSROOM IN A BOOK SERIES ON THE ADOBE VIDEO COLLECTION
The Adobe Classroom in a Book series will take you step by step with lessons through which you will learn all the basics of using their programs. The latest editions of some of these books are not out yet. Some of the new editions may be in the redesigned layout used for the Photoshop CS2 book, with larger type, a more instructive layout, and color screen captures that make it easier to see details. The first in the new design is the Photoshop CS2 Classroom in a book.
This is aproximately the size of the largest screen captures in the Adobe classroom books. Most of the books are grayscale only. (This is a screen capture from Audition taken from the Adobe site and turned into grayscale.)
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Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 Studio Techniques Classroom in a Book
by Jacob Rosenberg
560 pages, color screen captures
$45 ISBN: 0321220528 Adobe 2004
www.adobepress.com
This book covers Premiere Pro 1.5 in a more advanced way than Premiere Pro listed below, and it covers 1.5 which the basic book does not. The change to color screen captures is very beneficial, though they are still small.
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Adobe Premiere Pro Classroom in a Book
by Creative Team
669 pages, grayscale screen captures
$45 ISBN: 0321193784 Adobe 2003
www.adobepress.com
Adobe's own text for Premiere Pro is an excellent book to take you through all the basics. This book should be coming out soon in an updated edition for 1.5 and in the new design.
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Adobe Audition 1.5: Classroom in a Book
281 pages grayscale screen captures illustrations - CD-ROM.
$45 ISBN: 0-321-26793-1 Adobe Press 2005
www.adobepress.com
The Audition sound editing program is an essential part of the Adobe Video Collection. The lessons in this book teach you to use the wide scope of facilities for recording, mixing, analyzing, looping, editing, and mastering, including noise reduction, audio restoration, spectrum and phase analysis. The small size of the screen captures is a problem for a book on a program with complex controls
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Adobe After Effects 6.0 Classroom in a Book
by Creative Team
392 pages, grayscale screen captures
$45 ISBN: 0321193792 Adobe Press 2003
www.adobepress.com
This is Adobe's text for After Effects, which should be coming out soon in an updated edition for 6.5 and in the new design. This is an excellent series to take you through all the basics.
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Adobe Encore Classroom in a Book
by Creative Team
304 pages, grayscale screen captures
$45 ISBN: 0321205472Adobe 2003
www.adobepress.com
This book is current for the present version of Adobe's DVD authoring program Encore. Encore is a well designed program that has a very useful integration with the rest of the Adobe Video Collection, which is something I find important for DVD authoring.
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Adobe Photoshop CS2 Classroom in a Book
482 pages, color illustrations, CD with lesson files
$49.99 ISBN 0321321847 Peachpit 2005
http://www.peachpit.com
This is the compreshensive course developed with Adobe that in 16 lessons, with review questions, will bring you to expert level in all the Photoshop essentials. The design of this new CS2 edition of the book has larger, all full color illustrations and a very attractive new page layout. If you want to learn Photoshop in depth, in a structured course, this is certainly the book for you.
For many more Photoshop books, go to: www.dlynnwaldron.com/photoshopbooks.html
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BOOKS ON THE VARIOUS PROGRAMS IN THE ADOBE VIDEO COLLECTION
Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere Pro in 24 Hours
by Jeff Sengstack
669 pages, grayscale screen captures
$29.99 ISBN: 0672326078 Sams 2004
www.samspublishing.com
An hour a day for 24 days with the text and then do the exercises with this book will give you a competence in this program, which is the choice among high end Windows users. After Effects and Audition are only briefly dealth with and if you wish to work in effects or do serious work with sound, you will need separate books along with these programs, which come bundled in the Adobe Video Collection.
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BOOKS ON ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS
CREATIVE MOTION GRAPHICS WITH AFTER EFFECTS (v 6.5) Volume I, the Essentials
by Trish & Chris Meyer
478 pages, color screen captures, DVD with demo and other items
$59.95 ISBN 1-57820-249-3 CMP Books 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
Adobe's After Effects is the most frequently used program in conjunction with Apple's Final Cut and Adobe's Premiere. After Effects provides the tools to do the kind of motion graphics and visual effects that were used in the movie Aviator. After Effects is the most frequently used program in conjunction with Apple's Final Cut and Adobe's Premiere.
After Effects 6.5 is available in two editions: After Effects 6.5 Standard provides core 2D and 3D compositing, animation, and visual effects tools. After Effects 6.5 Professional includes all of the features in After Effects Standard plus motion tracking and stabilization, advanced keying and warping tools, more than 30 additional visual effects, a particle system, scripting, network rendering, 16-bit-per-channel color, additional audio effects, and more.
This book covers the basics. Volume II covers Advanced Techniques.
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AFTER EFFECTS IN PRODUCTION (v 6.5) Step by Step Tutorials
by Trish & Chris Meyer
354 pages, color screen captures, DVD with demo and other items
$49.95 ISBN 1-57820-264-7 CMP 2005
www.cmpbooks.com
This book is the tutorial companion to the book CREATIVE MOTION GRAPHICS WITH AFTER EFFECTS (v 6.5) Volume I, the Essentials.
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ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 6.5 MAGIC
by Anna Ullrich, James Rankin
352 pages, large format 10 x 8, color screen captures, DVD with 30 day tryout of After Effects, 14 Day tryout of Boris FX complete collection, and other items. Mac & Windows.
$39.99 ISBN 0321267230 New Riders 2005
www.newriders.com
After Effects is the industry standard for creating many kinds of titling and other animated effects. This book takes you through a number of projects that introduce you to the capabilities within After Effects and using the various third party plug-ins. The DVD contains tryouts of everything used for the projects.
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THE BEST BOOK FOR DESIGNING DVD MENUS
DESIGNING DVD MENUS
by Michael Burns & George Cairns
191 pages, large format, color screen captures
$44.95 ISBN 1-57820-259-0 CMP Books 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
www.dvdmus.web-linke d.com
Academy 'screener' DVDs are sent to us without menus or interactivity, and when I compare those with the later commercially released DVDs, I realize what an enhancement it is to have well designed menus that offer the viewer controls and choices.
This well-illustrated book takes you from conceptualization to completion of DVD menus, and each step is important for a satisfactory final result.
The two principal software based editing programs are Final Cut for the Mac and Premiere for Windows. Each has its associated DVD authoring program. Premiere has Encore (and an excellent sound editing program Audition) and Final Cut has DVD Studio (and Soundtrack, the big brother of Garage Band, for creating scores). This book uses an equal number of examples from Encore and DVD Studio. (Note: The last part of the names of Final Cut and DVD Studio changed from Pro to HD in 2004.)
This is another in the series of well-designed books by the Ilex group in Cambridge, England, and published in America by CNP Books. Again the screen captures are very reduced in size and the art book quality printing done in China is essential to retaining the details.
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EASY DIGITAL HOME MOVIES
By Jake Ludington
209 pages, large format, color iIllustrations, CD
$19.99 ISBN 0789731142 Que 2004
www.quepublishing.com
This book is excellent for learning Windows Movie Maker 2, and such good value for money that no one who uses this program should be without it.
JERRY HOFMANN ON FINAL CUT PRO 4
by Jerry Hofmann
561 pages, grayscale screen captures, DCD
$35.00 ISBN: 0735712816 New Riders 2003
www.newriders.com
This book presents Final Cut Pro 4 from the perspective of Jerry Hofmann, a film maker and a team leader on The Final Cut Pro Forum, who takes you through a series of workshops and then on the DVD gives you files used to make the movie 'The Midnight Sun' which you can reedit
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For a very detailed look at what it is like to edit an epic movie in Final Cut Pro, I recommend most highly:
BEHIND THE SEEN: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema
By Charles Koppelman
348 pages, large format, illustrations in grayscale and color.
$39.99 ISBN: 0735714266 New Riders 2004
www.newriders.com
This book provides an in-depth insight into the process of film making in the digital editing era, and documents the first use of Final Cut Pro for an epic feature, which was filmed on location in Eastern Europe. I had the opportunity to talk with the director Anthony Minghella about this project and the ability to explore alternatives that digital editing during filming allowed him. This book gives that same project from the perspective of the editor, Walter Murch, in the form of a journal, notes and comments, as presented by author and fellow film maker Charles Koppelman. Koppelman was given unique access to document the work of Murch, one of the greats of film editing, who was Minghella's collaborator throughout the filming process.
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THE 5C's OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
By Joseph V. Mascelli
251 pages, large format, illustrations in grayscale.
$99.99 ISBN 1-879505-41-X Silman-James Press 1965
The most important thing, no matter what editing program you use, is to understand the artistic basics of cinematographyt and editing that go back before the Moviola. This useful book has been in print since 1965.
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LIGHTING for Digital Video & Television, 2nd ed.
by John Jackman
191 pages, grayscale illustratiohn, color insert
$39.95 ISBN 1-57820-251-5 CMP 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
Lighting is a creative art, but before you can be creative you have to know the basics and the equipment and this book will teach you what you know to get started in lighting your projects.
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USEFUL BOOKS ON THE ART AND TECHNOLOGY OF SOUND RECORDING:
Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science
by Bob Katz
319 pages, two tone illustrations, color insert, large format.
$39.99 ISBN: 0240805453 Focal Press 2002
This is a very important book for everyone serious about good quality sound. Katz is a knowledgeable advocate for good practices and gives clear explanations of how they can be achieved. It is a book I will be carrying around with me to explain and defend the way things should be done.
This is not a book for newbies, but for those who already have a solid foundation. It is filled with ideas to consider and debate and hopefully adopt, most important of which is his own 'K-System' for metering and monitoring in Chapter 15.
Being involved with movies and with recording classical music I am very concerned with the problems of dynamic range, which Katz discusses from several different perspectives.
He tells how to modify dynamic range and discusses levels and compression, which are hotly debated topics among recording engineers, sound designers and producers. He advocates that for digital recording there should be a 'cushion' above headroom to prevent distortion. He goes at length into the art and science of equalization and discusses noise reduction.
Katz makes the point that what is necessary compression in a car or for the sake of neighbors, is not enough dynamics for a theatre. He advocates that players come with a built in compression facility the listener can choose to use or not.
He also explains that if you are going to normalize you must do it to the entire album at once and never track by track, or when it is played the string quartet will be as loud as the 1812 Overture!
This is a very valuable book that deals with theory and concepts, rather than specific hardware and software, so it is not out of date even though it was published in 2002.
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INSTANT SURROUND SOUND
by Jeffrey P. Fisher
191 pages, grayscale illustrations and screen captures.
$34.95 ISBN 1-57820-246-9 CMP 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
This is a clearly written book for those who want to learn the basics of some aspects of recording for surround sound. The author is an expert on Acid, Sound Forge and Vegas.
This book covers the formats of surround sound, and the basics of how to record for surround, how to set up the hardware and software for post production, managing channels and downmixing, mixing for surround, all the elements of audio post production, and exporting the files.
One can have a whole library of books on sound recording and subscribe to every magazine and still not know a fraction of the current information. I am involved in recording symphony orchestras in 24-bit/96kHz and 192kHz, and we are constantly upgrading, as better equipment becomes available. Sound recording is by far the most complex and rapidly changing of the media in which I work.
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The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production, 2nd Edition
by David Gibson
344 pages, color illustrations, large format.
$49.99 ISBN: 1931140456 Artistpro 2005
This is a very unusual book. It employs a visual 3D metaphor to present the concepts of sound mix in various various orchestral groups and for various types of music. For those who are not visual, the concise text stands on its own at a basic level.
All the visuals were not immediately communicative and it took a day for the two parts of my brain to link up on the same information, but I did gain insights from using the visual part of my brain for auditory concepts.
This not a book for everyone and I suggest you look at it in a book store before deciding to buy it.
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INSTANT SURROUND SOUND
by Jeffrey P. Fisher
191 pages, grayscale illustrations and screen captures.
$34.95 ISBN 1-57820-246-9 CMP 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
This is a clearly written book for those who want to learn the basics of some aspects of recording for surround sound. The author is an expert on Acid, Sound Forge and Vegas.
This book covers the formats of surround sound, and the basics of how to record for surround, how to set up the hardware and software for post production, managing channels and downmixing, mixing for surround, all the elements of audio post production, and exporting the files.
One can have a whole library of books on sound recording and subscribe to every magazine and still not know a fraction of the information. I am involved in recording symphony orchestras in 24-bit/96kHz and 192kHz, and we are constantly upgrading, as better equipment becomes available. Sound recording is by far the most complex and rapidly changing of the media in which my work involves.
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Cubase SX 2 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide
by Thad Brown
464 pages, grayscale screen captures
$19.99 ISBN 0321246438 Peachpit 2004
http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321246438
This is a useful book, however be aware that Cubase is now up to version SX 3.
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MAKE YOUR OWN MUSIC VIDEO
by Ed Gaskell
191 pages, color screen capturesand illustrations
$44.95 ISBN 1-57820-258-2 CMP Books 2004
www.cmpbooks.com
www.musvus.web-linked.com
This book is as visually busy as a music video. It deals with the business, technical and artistic aspects of this important part of the entertainment industry.
Making videos digitally is now affordable enough for kids and this is an excellent book to with which to get started on music videos .
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Producing Great Sound for Digital Video: Second Edition
by Jay Rose
428 pages, CD
$44.95 ISBN 1-57820-2086 CMP Books 2002
www.cmpbooks.com
This is a book that will help beginners prepare for, capture and work with the audio portion of video and solve the common problems that are encountered.
D'Lynn Waldron, PhD ©
