High-Tech Parent

1. A Mac Laptop or Tower

I know people will fight me on this, but the truth is that Macs are a lot better than PCs when it comes to creative endeavors. Can PCs get the job done? Sure, but there will be extra work involved.

Depending on the software your planning on getting any Mac could do the trick. If you plan to use iMovie for editing a Mac Book would do the trick. If you want to go pro and use Final Cut Pro then I suggest a Mac Book Pro laptop, or a Mac Pro tower.

2. HD Video Camera

If you have a really great video camera that you are shooting with now, great! Keep it! HOWEVER, if you are in the market for a new camera, please, please, buy a camera that can shoot High Definition (HD). The fact of the matter is that standard definition (SD) is on its way out. If money is an issue, I suggest just waiting for the price to come down. Check back for a post on the differences between SD and HD video.

3. Final Cut Pro or iLife Software

Hollywood feature films are edited on Apple’s Final Cut Pro Studio software. Final Cut 6 was just released and it costs around $1300. A steep price, but the features are limitless. It allows you to edit video, create motion graphics, add a soundtrack, and burn your movie to DVD. It may seem complicated at first glance, but with a training book or free tutorials on the web you will quickly get the hang of it.

Final Cut Express is the little brother to Final Cut Pro. You lose some features, but it only costs a couple hundred dollars. The program can be a good stepping stone to the more full-featured program.

iMovie is the cousin in this family. It’s part of iLife, a group of software programs that retails for less than $100. This program is not feature-rich, but it gets the job done.

For Windows people: There are some good PC editing programs out there. A low-cost option is Sony Vegas. A more expensive option is Adobe Premiere.

4. Tons of Hard Drive Space

If you are going to shoot lots of home videos, you are going to need space on your computer to store them. I currently have over 2.5TB (Terabytes) worth of FireWire hard drives and I am looking to buy more, because I’m down to a few gigabytes of free space.

The bottom line: If you want great videos you are going to need to edit them on your computer. To edit them on your computer you are going to need plenty of hard drive space.