While under embargo for another week or so, Adobe’s CS4 is going to open a can of worms in a world that has already given the casual and professional video editor a bucket load of choices. It has simply amazing new capabilities that I would never have thought of. All will be revealed on the 23rd September, but until then, my lips are sealed.

A few short years back, serious editing at the PC level was restricted to Adobe Premiere on both the Mac or the PC, and really SERIOUS editing required dedicated hardware cards that cost a mozza. Now, packages costing only $99 such as Cyberlink Director can do far more than these early systems could even dream of.

Further up the food chain, editing packages such as newly released Edius 5 and Sony Vegas (rumoured to have a version 9 in the wings ready for launch) have gained a loyal following, Avid has its Liquid range (and the lower level Pinnacle programs) and of course Apple has the Final Cut series. And then there are programs from ULead (Corel), Magix, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie ...

Hardware is less expensive but much more sophisticated. Camcorders available now are routinely capable of high definition, recording to hard drives or SD cards with more than acceptable lumps of glass at the front giving equally acceptable wide angle and optical zoom ranges. Batteries have increased in recording time and thankfully, manufactures seem to be over the smaller is better syndrome and made cameras with s decent form factor you can actually hold.

Anyone can now make superior home movies, or as my colleague at AusCam and Head of Arts at the International Film School in Sydney, Mike Jones calls them, “family documentaries”. I found out today, there is now more data on the web in the form of video, than there was total data just two years ago!

It seems everyone wants to record and document everything, using anything from camera phones to sophisticated hi-def cameras. Never have we had so much choice, with so much capability. Time to join in the fun.