At pound;1,099, Viglen’s Genie DV Editor seems pricey for a school. However, it packs a punch that you would not expect in an entry-level, digital video editing system.
Schools wanting to delve into the world of shooting, editing and producing their own video masterpieces will need a powerful computer capable of handling the heavy demand of video editing. This means a top-of-the-range processor, plenty of memory, a big hard disk, a high-speed (FireWire) connection to and from the video camera and a quality graphics card. A CD-RW or DVD burner is also essential for recording your finished movie on to a variety of video formats.
So how does the Viglen Genie shape up? The fast Pentium III 1GHz processor and 256Mb of memory provide quick and efficient editing. The 40Gb fast hard drive offers plenty of storage for your space-hungry video from the DV camera and the FireWire connection allows you to send edited video back to the camera to store on DV tape or transfer to a compatible VCR to record onto videotape.
The Genie’s 17-inch colour monitor and soundsystem make your videos look and sound stunning, too. And the Panasonic DVD burner and CD-ReWriter provide users with a useful cross-section of media on which to save movies.
Pinnacle’s Studio 7 digital video editing software is superb. It is easy to use, intuitive and has plenty of features to explore and creating a professional-looking DVD movie, complete with menus, is straightforward.
Having used this machine to create three movies, later recording them onto either DVD or tape, I was very impressed. The process was easy and the results look and sound excellent.
Digital video creation is cross-curricular, it combines many different skills and offers pupils a multimedia working canvas. The most important thing is to ensure your hardware is powerful enough to support the activity and Viglen’s Genie DVE does that elegantly.
Chris Drage
Viglen Digital editing PC
Intel Pentium 4 (1.7GHz)
512Mb memory
80Gb hard drive
19-inch colour monitor
CD-R drive
DVDCD burner
Price: pound;1,999Viglen Computers
Tel: 020 8758 7170
www.viglen.co.uk
Nob-5
Viglen Genie DVE
Intel Pentium III (1GHz) 256Mb memory
40Gb hard drive
17-inch colour monitor
DVDCD burner
Pinnacle Studio 7
Price: pound;1,099Viglen Computers
Tel: 020 8758 7170
www.viglen.co.uk
Nob-6
All the above computers have FireWire connections
