Folks who know me are aware that I’m easily distracted. Turns out all my good intentions of reviewing Roxio Creator 2010 were put on hold when I went home on Friday to find a book on video editing waiting at my front door. Soon after I opened the package, I was hooked, and Roxio was soon a distant memory.

The book was interesting enough that I read it over every free moment I had (even while at a basketball game) until it was done.

I assess every book that I read using a very simple yardstick – “Was it worth the investment of my time in reading this book?”. I’m willing to overlook minor issues as long as this basic test is met – and this book passed that test with flying colors.

So what did I learn?

First – make sure that you shoot only as much video as you think is absolutely necessary. With how cheap it is to shoot video, I’m often tempted to “overshoot” – and this is a major hassle in post production and archival. On a recent vacation, I ended up with over 2 hours of video, that I’d like to edit down to 20 minutes. Even after I eliminate all the obvious shaky camera and bad exposure bits, I’m still stuck with too much video to consider.

Second – focus on telling a story. With this vacation, I probably should have shot establishing shots of us arriving at the airport, at the resort, at major events during the stay, the kids having fun, and the final departure. Instead, I had a hodge podge of sequences that is a challenge for me to edit into any form of story. At least Mr Cameron has no competition from me in this regard.

The subtext of this book is “Storytelling with HD cameras”, and sure enough the author demonstrates obvious knowledge and depth of understanding of all things High Def. 

For instance, I’ve always been quite disenchanted with 24p video and couldn’t quite figure out why I wasn’t as excited about the “film” look as everyone else seemed to be. I found the strobing at 24p to be so annoying, that I almost never use that mode. This book finally explains why 1080p @ 60i can make video seem smoother than at 24p.

There’s a lot of good stuff here – right from how to pick your first camcorder (no, resolution is not that critical; and yes, auto mode is the devil), to picking your accessories (an entire section on tripods!). In my opinion,  this should be a must-buy purchase before you get yourself a new HD camcorder.

This is the kind of book that will need repeated visits in order to internalize its advice.

For a more detailed review of this book – check out my review on Amazon.com.