Hardware-enhanced editing.(Video: digital video editing)

One of the most exciting trends in digital video editing this year has been the facility to do high-quality work without needing special capture or processing hardware (see "Beyond the HD Hoopla," July 2004, pg. 8). It's a liberating promise: Take a camcorder and a computer, even a laptop, connect them by FireWire, and you've got a full-blown editing station for the home, the road, or any cubicle in any creative organization.

Of course, there's more to the story in today's evolving editing world. As real as the "software-only" trend is, there's also no shortage of news coming from hardware companies. After all, for about as long as digital video and non-linear editing systems have been around, there has been a tug-of-war between whether hardware or software should solve problems for the most demanding video professionals.

Today, cutting-edge hardware from companies such as AJA, Blackmagic Design, Bluefish444, Matrox, and Pinnacle Systems offers capabilities that go far beyond the power of just the system CPU. More I/O possibilities, more real-time functionality, more layers, higher quality images, and overall greater productivity are among the benefits of the dedicated hardware that you might think you can do without.

Simply put, it's a cycle. Over the years, hardware companies have led the push from off-line image quality to finishing, from compressed video to uncompressed, and from off-line rendering of all effects to real-time, multi-track editing. As processor speeds have increased, editing interface companies such as Adobe and Apple are beginning to provide each of these functions "in software," seemingly negating the need for hardware. But, they've only driven the hardware companies to find more power and offer more features and functions.

Similarly, the trend toward editing with just software and a CPU started shortly after the first FireWire-equipped DV camcorders arrived in the middle 1990s. Back then, the promise was to losslessly import DV-compressed footage over FireWire, edit it using just the power of the system CPU, and output it back to DV tape over FireWire or compress it to another digital format. Of course, there were almost no computers that came with built-in FireWire ports and, at a minimum, you needed a FireWire I/O card. Many were quite inexpensive, but it wasn't long before companies such as Matrox and Pinnacle Systems started putting a DV codec on the expansion card to off-load the system CPU and to offer real-time dual-stream editing.

Deja Voodoo

Today's HD transfer over FireWire from Panasonic's new AJ-HD 1200A high-definition deck is similar to what was done in the early days of DV, except that the amount of data is higher and the codec has been optimized. But CPUs are faster now, so the same sans-hardware promise extends to transferring and editing compressed HD footage. Apple announced this first, but PC vendors aren't far behind.