At a shoot, start the camera rolling at least 5 seconds before what you want to record has started, and stop it 5 seconds after it’s over. This is extremely important! There’s nothing worse than trying to edit a video that doesn’t have enough video pad  for capture and transitions! Video tape is cheap! Shoot more, not less!

Don’t use the overlay, fade, or other controls on your camcorder! If you do, you’re stuck with them forever—better to make those decisions at edit time!

Keep your backgrounds simple! This is generally good advice, but especially if you intend to use text overlays. Make backgrounds a solid color if possible, and make sure there’s enough room around your subject for overlays  to appear if you intend to use them. You’ll find that overlays disappear in busy backgrounds, and they will block the view of action if you don’t allow for them.

Estimate how much time you’ll need to produce your video . . . then triple it. Nothing ever goes as planned, and editing usually appears to be simpler than it ends up. Pro studios are good at quick-editing under a deadline—that’s why they’re pros. Student projects take time!

• Make sure there’s adequate hard drive space.
• Don’t have a lot of programs sitting on your computer desktop—they use up resident memory and processing speed just sitting there. It’s best to have the computer dedicated to video use, and nothing else, if you can get away with it!
• Do not multi-task! Edit your video, and do nothing else on that machine until you’re done editing/rendering your video. Just ‘cause Windows says you can doesn’t mean Studio will like it!
• When capturing, start the video tape before hitting “Start Capture,” and hit “Stop capture” before stopping the tape. Studio gets confused when it fails to find a video signal.
• Make sure a task has been executed before doing another. Don’t click ahead like you do with other programs!

No sound!!! Double-check your patch cables. Verify that there is sound by plugging your VCR or camcorder into a TV for playback. Beyond that . . . since you’re dependent on your computer's sound card supplying the sound both in and out, if you’re not getting sound through the Studio the problem may be in your sound card settings. Double-click on the speaker icon in the lower right hand corner, and make sure nothing is muted or turned down. Make sure that the audio settings in the Studio are checked. If you’re still not getting sound, see your District techie or STC for help.

Lousy sound! As you might guess, sound is a tough one. There’s several things you can do about sound before editing, fewer as you edit. See above for hints on improving sound in the field. If you’re staring at footage whose sound is poor, you can’t do much about it other than overlay music and narration through Studio. Sometimes sound is too hot on tape, and adjusting it down in Studio helps.

I can’t find my captured video! Remember about “Naming files?” If you let the computer pick what your files are named, and where they’re put, you may not easily find them again! There’s nothing worse than 12 sub-folders inside the captured video folder, all filled with files named “Video #,” and none having anything to do with the name of the folder! It happens so often!

What’s all this about digital video? My camcorder supports it—does Studio? Analog versions of Studio support digital - you just need the Firewire card.

I want to do animation with Studio - can I generate or find an animated GIF and put it into Studio? Nope, it doesn’t support that. You have to "back-door" to get still pictures into the environment by putting them in titles, and that process handles still GIFs, but not animations. Paint Shop Pro and other programs will save animated GIFs as AVI files, which can be imported into Studio.