Tap 21 and Movie Studio

[binny121]

I'm not familiar with either one...yet.
But I so want to change my video editing experience from "clicking a mouse" to "touching the screen." I'm in search of a "manual" experience like in the good old days of 3/4" tape with Record decks and Play decks where hands were actively involved shoving tapes and nudging shuttle knobs and turning buttons.

So when I learned about Sony's Tap 21 touchscreen laptop that comes preloaded with Movie Studio, it caught my eye.

My question is this....will editing with Movie Studio (on a long documentary project using many hours of HD footage) become a nightmare using a 21" touch screen? In other words, is the normal editing experience so driven by menus and tiny icons and keyboard strokes that trying to touch the screen to accomplish the same task become almost painful if not impossible?

Your answer will determine whether I invest $1700 in their AIO Tap 21 (which hasn't been released but will be available in about 3 weeks).

[TreeTopsRanch]

I don't think anyone here uses a touch screen to edit videos.It may be possible for really simple tasks like dragging an event to the timeline but why anyone would like to smear their screen up with greasy finger prints is beyond me.

[Steve Grisetti]

Any editing experience is a matter of your personal preference.

Editing with a mouse is so second nature to me, I think moving things around a computer by touching and dragging would really slow me down.

But that may not be your experience. It's a matter of your personal preference. And only you can see if it will work for you.

Movie Studio isn't designed as a touch-based video editor -- but that doesn't mean it won't work as one. Is it available for you to borrow a computer for a few days and give it a try? For $1700, they ought to at least give you a test drive first!

[binny121]

Yes, Sony has a 30-day trial period. I can order a decked-out Tap 21 and play with it for a month.
Meanwhile, I got your book on Movie Studio to get up to speed before it arrives.
This is new territory. I can't find anyone on the internet who's done serious editing with a touch screen. Does anyone know of anyone who has?

[Bob]

I haven't heard of anyone using a touch screen for video editing. You can certainly do it, but, essentially, you would be mimicking a mouse and using menus. Experienced editors tend to gravitate towards keyboard shortcuts for speed and efficiency.

I have a Wacom Intuos tablet that I use with applications such as Photoshop. In Photoshop, I can take advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the tablet to control my brushes. It's also easier and more precise than a mouse when drawing. But, in my video editor, it's basically the same as a mouse. The only advantage there is that I can assign common keystrokes to the Wacom tablet keys and pen buttons.

With a touch screen, you don't have pressure sensitivity. Your finger is bigger than a stylus, so your position is going to be a little more imprecise. And, you'll probably want to use the screen flat on a table rather than use the stand as having the screen vertical is tiring if you will be extending your arm to touch it frequently.

It all comes down to personal preferences. Only you can decide whether you'll like it or not.

[binny121]

Maybe that's the problem...nobody has developed editing software for anything beyond smart phones and ipads. Perhaps its because Windows 7/8 hasn't been around long enough? Or the mouse culture is so deeply engrained?
All I can find are simple programs like Cyberlink's Power Director Mobile:
http://www.cyberlink.com/products/power ... en_US.html

Or simple programs like Splice or Wondershare which seem more oriented around dropping a few clips on a timeline and immediately posting to youtube.

I don't know if touch screen is too cutting edge or if perhaps someone is working on a more serious program for larger screens as we speak.

[TreeTopsRanch]

Using a touch screen doesn't seem to be to productive for real work like word documents, excel spreadsheets, video editing and so on. So far I haven't seen anyone that wants to be really productive use a touch screen. Have you?

[Bob]

Touch screen is not cutting edge. Touch screen monitors have been around since the late 1970-1980's. I used them in a system I designed back in the 1990's.

The problem is speed. You simply can't work as fast using just touch. And, in the commercial world, time is money. A real world video editor producing a commercial product can't afford to be slowed down by the lack of keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys.

Consumer level is different. The consumer market is currently being driven by smart phones and tablets with relatively small screens. The typical consumer doesn't care about a full fledged video editing application and those simplistic editing/sharing applications are fine. Consumers that want a more capable video editing application are using laptops or desktops. Perhaps, as the mobile market matures, you'll see more capable mobile devices and better software. Time will tell.

The Sony Tap 21 is not particularly well suited to serious video editing. It's still considered a mobile device and has relatively low processor speed and graphics capability. It's also fixed at 4GB RAM and has a single hard drive. It's likely to be slow compared to a desktop, especially if you are editing avchd high definition video. On the plus side, it does run Windows so you can use a conventional editing program and it does come with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

[binny121]

I'm starting to think the touch screen experience might not be very pleasant for video.
As for Tap 21, just to be sure, it uses i7 processors, can use as much as 12GB RAM, offers solid state or hybrid drives and uses an intergrated Intel Iris graphics card. I have to figure Sony knew what they were doing when they bundled Movie Studio 12 with the computer or else they'd be getting a lot of angry calls into the tech center!

[Bob]

Sorry, I didn't see the i7 model at first, I saw the i5 model. The i7 model is much better and should handle video fine. The one thing to watch out for is the single internal drive. The standard hard drive appears to be 5400 rpm which would be slow, the SSD would be much better speed wise and the system would be more responsive, but the capacity is much less. It would have been nice to have had the option of a second internal drive.