Do you want to know how to handle a digital video camera, and how to create simple effects? Are you a beginner in the realm of digital video? If so, this book is valuable as it will show you exactly how to use a digital video camera to create videoblog entries. And that means you’ll have to be proficient in the most basic and simple video and video editing skills.

This book on videoblogging is written by Michael Verdi and Ryanne Hodson. They had the help of Diana Weynand and Shirley Craig, and their book shows you in little under 200 pages how you can create a videoblog and fill it up with videos as well. The book starts with a number of examples of videoblogs already on the web. The book was written before the YouTube hype struck, so no reference to those types of videsites.

However, pretty fast, the authors start concentrating on the practical problems with videoblogging. How to create a video, how to license videos, and how to edit videos once shot. The focus in the editing chapters is on Mac OS X, and little information is given on the Windows side of the process.

The chapter on equipment and software is too short to be really useful, but only if you’re an absolute beginner. On the other hand, the chapter on video compression is too elaborate, certainly if you have done some videoblogging before.

In short, I found this book to be lacking a clearly defined market: is it for beginners, or for intermediate users? That’s not entirely clear to me. The back of the book babbles along about “secrets of videoblogging”, but to be honest, I didn’t find any.