What is video editing? Video Editing is the process of taking your home video, webcam video or a video from YouTube or the web, putting it into your home computer and making it shorter or longer, adding music or adding graphics or extra video. Unfortunately, if your computer is fairly old, it probably won't be able to handle video. Video clips take up a huge amount of space. But if you have a relatively new computer with plenty of hard drive space, your computer should handle video just fine.
First you have to upload your video clips into your computer. If you have a firewire port on your computer you can hook your camcorder to your computer with a firewire cable. Most camcorders - Hi8, digital 8, mini DV or Disk cameras have a firewire or a DV (digital Video) port somewhere on the outside of the case. Open all the compartments on your camcorder to find it, as there are a lot of different connector possibilities. If your camcorder didn't come with an A/V cable with a USB on the other end, you will have to buy a firewire cable. Most camcorder manufacturers don't include a firewire cable when you buy the camera.
What if your camcorder is an older model and only has the typical red/white/yellow A/V cable? Then you will need a video converter, like the Dazzle DVD Recorder, made by Pinnacle. This converter has a USB connector on one end and a video and audio receptacle for you to plug in you're A/V cable from your camcorder. The video converter converts your video clips into an AVI (audio video information) and that's what you will use for your editing.
You can upload your video clips or your webcam video onto your hard drive OR upload them directly into your video editing software. If you are brand new to video editing, I highly recommend Windows Movie Maker and if you are ready to edit your footage you might as well upload it right to that program. There are also many very reasonably priced video editing programs available: Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, and Muvee just to name a few. But for the beginner, there's nothing better than Windows Movie Maker, and you should try that program first to make sure you like video editing.
If you can't find Movie Maker in your computer, search for it by hitting the start button and then search. I would suggest leaving off the word Windows from your search so it doesn't bring up all the rest of the Windows related files. If you can't find it do a Google search for Windows Movie Maker and download the latest version because it's free!
Once you have opened the Windows Movie Maker program, go to File, and then select Capture Video. When you plugged in the Dazzle converter you should also have used the Dazzle Software CD that activated it. If not, you can go to the Pinnacle site and download the appropriate software for your version of the converter. So when you select file capture you should see the Dazzle box as a capture device option.
You will also need to test the audio coming from the Dazzle box. There is an audio meter that measures the audio level of your video so record just a few seconds before you do a lot of capturing just to make sure you are getting audio. You can also see that the Dazzle device has an S Video and composite selection. S Video is a little better quality than composite so if you happen to have an SVideo cable connection available out of your camcorder or VHS machine, you should use it.
There will be several screens in the Capture Video process that ask you what you want to label your clip and where you want to file it. Be specific because once you start uploading you'll probably put a lot of video onto your hard drive, and being specific will help you find it in search later on. The My videos folder works fine as a filing spot, but as you have more projects you may want to begin to create specific files for each project.
The last screen in the video capture process asks you what format you want to use to capture your video. There are a lot of choices but the two most important are DV AVI and WMV. The default is WMV and it is labeled, "Best quality for playback on my computer" because it saves space, but it isn't the best quality. It's the WMV file format and although it doesn't take up as much hard drive space it's just not the quality you want if you are going to go to all the trouble to edit this video. You will have to judge whether you have enough hard drive space to be able to handle the best quality video, but in the long run you will be happier with your final product. So choose the DV AVI option if it's available. Then hit Start Capture and begin to upload your video clips into your computer.
When you have uploaded all your video, click stop capture and Windows Movie Maker will load the clip into collections. Play it back to make sure you are seeing and hearing what you meant to upload. Now drag the video clip down to the timeline and you are ready to get started editing. There are many free Windows Movie Maker tutorials on the web, and one of the best is on the Microsoft website.
One more thing about video clips on your hard drive. They are very easy to lose! Here is the easiest way to find your video clips. Double click My Computer on your desktop. Then go to My Documents and find My Videos. Double click My Videos, go up to the top menu bar and click Views. Select details and click Date Modified twice. That will show you the last video clips you saved on your hard drive. I hope this helped you learn how to start the video editing process by uploading video clips into your computer. Yes, it's a little technical but stick with it because once you edit a video and amaze your friends and family, it will all have been worth it!
