35mm adapter
To get that sought-after filmlook you need a couple of things. First off, you need a brilliant idea, a great story. Second, you need to know how to frame and light, direct and edit. But what definitely is the cherry on top, is having the footage look like it was shot on actual film. Now of course there is nothing that looks exactly like filmstock, except for film, yet with a 35mm adapter and photographic lenses you can come pretty darn close. I use an SGblade 35mm adapter with Nikon lenses. A great product from Shoot35.
Optimize VirtMem use on older machines
I run my video editing software on a Windows XP pro Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB RAM installed. It is common knowledge that Windows XP uses a maximum of 4GB for virtual memory, splitting it down the middle. 2GB for the Kernel and 2GB for User-mode processes. In the case of some software (e.g. After Effects) this leaves you with less Virtual Memory than you could use. A way to regain some of this memory power is to add the 3GB switch to your boot.ini. Here’s an excellent article about the what, the why (& why not) and the how.