Chapter 43: Viewing, Creating, and Editing Video

Overview

When DVDs first started to appear, people were amazed with their picture and sound quality, but they were still tied to the television. The real fun came later when you could play a DVD on a long road trip or entertain a small group in the airport.

DVD drives and their ability to play video DVDs are common on most new laptops and computers. Movie DVDs require a DVD drive to be installed in the computer along with some specialized software that can read and play the DVDs before they can be seen.

A common place to see lower-resolution video is through the Internet using one of the many media players and an Internet connection. Although streaming video can be seen using a dial-up connection, they really require a broadband connection to see the video in any detail.

Most video cameras that are available today are digital and with the right cabling can be connected directly to a computer. By connecting a video camera to a computer, you can download the video sequences to the computer where you can edit them, then store them on a DVD.

This chapter shows how you can use computers to view DVDs and also use them with video cameras to view, create, and edit video segments.