There are 5 main things to consider when looking at an editing system.

1. If you are going to be the one cutting the piece, ask yourself what hardware platform you want to run on: Windows or Mac? It may be one that you are most familiar with. If you're looking for an editor to cut your piece, then you may want to ask professional editors to see what people are familiar with.

2. Decide on how much you want to spend. Apply a realistic amount of your budget for your edit system. Good quality edit suites do not come cheap! If you are unsure, do a bit of research and see what the going price is.

3. Know what formats you will need to edit. Most edit systems support various formats from DV to uncompressed standard definition, HDV to uncompressed high definition. However only a few will support mixing multiple formats in the same project. Consider what you need now and what you may need in the future. This determines hardware requirements, storage requirements and ultimately which edit system you choose.

4. How many hours of raw footage do you have? Also, how many hours do you intend your final piece to be? Is it a short commercial or a feature length documentary? This determines the amount of storage you will require.

5. What are you outputting the final project to? Tape? DVD? Web? If you're outputting to DVD, you'll probably need a good burner and a software authoring program. There are many flavours to choose from depending on what you want to do. If you are outputting for the web you will need some software to encode the video for web streaming. If it's tape, what tape formats do you anticipate you will need to deliver to? Different formats may require different interface solutions.

Videocraft have dedicated post production specialists who have extensive knowledge and experience building and supporting editing systems to suit your requirements and budget. Just give us a call and our friendly staff will be happy to discuss.