Maxtor's Video Kit Aims At Home Movie Moguls
By Matthew Herper
Deep down, many people who make home movies probably harbor a burning desire to give their little films a sense of pace, a professional feel, even special effects. Now that digital camcorders are becoming increasingly prevalent, many home movie nuts probably hope to be able to turn their computers into movie studios.
Apple Computer keyed into such video-centric desires with a series of television advertisements for its iMac starring Jeff Goldblum, who would intone, "Now you're the maker of great stuff." But Apple's not alone: A leading hard drive company, Maxtor , also wants to lead in the market of digital home-video editing.
Milipitas, Calif.-based Maxtor's solution is for the Microsoft Windows operating system and is priced at a relatively affordable $80. The package includes video-editing software made by a Fremont, Calif.-based company called ArcSoft , as well as a card with two IEEE 1394, or FireWire, ports and a camcorder cable that connects to it. As a bonus, it also includes PhotoBase multimedia management software, also from ArcSoft.
The high-speed FireWire ports are key to Maxtor, because the company makes hard drives that connect to them--including its 160 gigabyte Maxtor Personal Storage 3000XT external drive that sells for $400. According to estimates from Arizona's International Data Corp., sales of digital camcorders will rise from $7.1 billion in 2001 to $7.9 billion in 2002. Presumably, Maxtor would be thrilled if all those digital camcorder owners not only used its editing kit to cut their movies, but also used its hard drives to store them.
The video-editing package is certainly appealing from a cost standpoint. Adobe Systems offers a video-editing software package, Premiere. But Premiere is priced at $550 if one wants to buy it after a free trial--hardly a price that's going to turn home movie buffs into homegrown Steven Speilbergs.
ArcSoft throws in some fancy special effects with the software, which also features drag-and-drop video editing. But the product is clearly aimed at the home market. As Tex Schenkkan, Maxtor's senior vice president of consumer electronics and business systems, puts it, "Home users now have an easy and affordable way to produce Hollywood-style results." |
