Home movies are no longer an experience to be avoided at all costs, Angus Kidman reports

Published in AustralianIT, April 1 2003

IF a relative offers to show you video footage of their 1983 wedding, chances are you'll say no.

Not only will the hairstyles be appalling, video editing techniques at the time were so primitive that half the footage is likely to be out-of-focus shots of your cousin's ankle.

In the digital era, this is no longer the case. Computer-based editing systems allow you to cut out the extraneous footage, and add a range of special effects and transitions to the finished work.

While creating a purely digital character in the style of Star Wars' Jar-Jar Binks or Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings may be beyond a typical home PC, even the most basic editing systems these days offer a wide range of choices.

At the top of the market, Adobe's Premiere offers tight integration with other Adobe packages, enabling you to use the full range of fonts from Illustrator and the wide range of specialist video effects in After Effects, including the addition of shadows and light filters to images.

This capability comes at a price: about $1300 for Premiere on its own, or $3000 for a digital video bundle that includes After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator.

For home video editors, the most important effects are often transitions, which provide the links between different scenes.

As well as conventional options such as wipes or fades to black, packages these days offer more exotic choices, such as blurring or changing the direction of lighting.

Ulead's VideoStudio offers a mind-boggling 115 transition effects.

Not sure which transition to use? ArcSoft's ShowBiz application can apply random transitions between scenes.

If realism isn't your main goal, you could run your wedding footage in slow motion, convert selected scenes into black and white, apply a lens flare for that apocalyptic feeling, or add some extra grain and claim it's really your grandmother's nuptials.

With so many effects available, it can be tempting to transform your video into a everything-but-the-kitchen-sink showcase. Resist the temptation. Restraint is more effective.

Bear in mind the example of Star Wars director George Lucas, who has access to almost any effect he wants, but a simple horizontal wipe remains one of his favourite transitional devices.

Also remember that an effect that looks cutting-edge today is likely to as embarrassing in 2023 as your cousin's ankle is today.