The Video Workbench: A Direct
Manipulation Interface for Digital Media Editing by
Amateur Videographers
by:
Michael Steele, Marti Hearst, Lawrence A. Rowe
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 USA
The Video Workbench is a nonlinear digital video editor designed to edit
home movies. Unlike existing nonlinear video editors which allow experts to
create complex arrangements of shots, sounds, and special effects but take
some time to learn, the Video Workbench is intended to support the most
common editing tasks in amateur projects while requiring only a few minutes
to learn. The Video Workbench provides a visual conceptual model of how
audio and video content is being manipulated by representing audio and
video clips as visualizations that can be moved about on a virtual
workbench surface. The specialized tools on the workbench operate directly
on the visualizations, and in so doing, manipulate the content they
represent.