Michael Rubin

a friendly introduction to home video

The little digital video book

tiff

This little book is great for a person beginning the video shooting and professional-like editing. It is Mac-centric but you can apply the editing techniques to software for PC like my favorite Sony Vegas HD Platinum 10.

Rubin's style is hip and geeky, a sort of seamless mixture of the two. He tells you the different camcorder types, tapes (and tapeless mediums), cables etc. What I liked most is the coverage of HOW to shoot GOOD clips. From Wide shots, medium shots, shot/reverse shot, you name it, he covers it. It is important for every potential videographer to read this part. It may seem rudimentary for some but this book is definitely for beginners.

There is one caveat:

The book IS dated. I'm shooting with a prosumer DSLR that has 720p HD video shooting capabilities and shoots frames at 1/24 of a sec (or 24 frames a second). He never mentions this as a possibility, which I think he would have done if it was written this year or even 2009. I know the book is about video but I think this "niche" can't be overlooked.

Other than that this was a quick, excellent introduction to video and video editing.

The little digital video book a friendly introduction to home video

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