Dual-monitor editing stations used to be exotic, expensive, and hard to set up and maintain. Today, with virtually all new graphics cards offering dual-output ports, flat-panel monitors priced well below $300, and rock-solid support in Windows XP and popular prosumer NLEs like Adobe Premiere Pro, building a dual-monitor station is both financially and technically within the reach of most professional …

Focus Enhancements‘ FS-C direct to edit (DTE) recorder is a high-performance, feature-rich product that’s the perfect complement to Canon camcorders like the XL H1, XH A1, or even XL2 (I tested with the XH A1). The only catch is price; at $1,799.95 for the 100GB model at B&H Photo, the unit may be hard to justify for all but the …

Many videographers are creating iPod-compatible files for clients or for posting as demo files on their websites. You would think that with a gazillion iPods sold, the process of getting video onto an iPod would be very straightforward. Well, there’s straightforward, and then there’s straightforward. If you’re a soccer mom showing off vacation videos, your audience will be impressed that …

This brings up a critical point on saving intermediate files while editing. Though you can undo all of the tasks described above while you’re editing the file, once you save the file, you can’t go back—Soundbooth applies all edi

I’m a big Adobe Audition fan, and when I heard that the powerful multitrack audio editing program found in Adobe Production Studio would be replaced in the upcoming CS3 bundle by a more feature-limited version, I was less than pleased. That

Figure 3 shows a good cross section of the types of microphones you should be considering for your shoots. Let's briefly identify them, and then cover the three characteristics of microphones you need to learn before buying. Figure

There are two ways to connect external microphones to camcorders, though not all camcorders offer either or both options. First, of course, is your microphone port, which comes in two general categories. One is an XLR connector, which is typicall

So those are the microphones and the ways they connect. But how do they perform?To test performance, we used a high-quality, digitized recording of a woman speaking, played back over computer speakers at a standardized volume. To create ambient so

So, if you want to use a high-end microphone with your camcorder and you don't have an XLR jack, you'll have to find a way to convert from the XLR cable to the 3.5mm connector on your camera. We explored two alternatives.The first was a "line matc

This leads us to the three issues you need to address before buying a microphone. Note that you have to ask the same questions whether the microphone is wired or wireless, since the issues are identical.What is the pickup pattern?First is the pick