Basic Video Editing - Uploading Video Footage on your home computer

What is video editing? Video Editing is the process of taking your home video, video camera or a video from YouTube or on the web, putting it into your home computer and that makes it more or less long, adding music or adding graphics or video Extra. Unfortunately, if your computer is fairly old, probably will not be able to handle video. Video clips take up a huge amount of space. But if you have a relatively new computer with lots of space on your hard disk, your computer must handle well the video.

First you need to upload your video on your computer. If you have a FireWire port on your computer, you can connect the camcorder to the computer with a firewire cable. - Most camcorders Hi8, Digital 8, mini DV cameras, or have a firewire drive or a (Digital Video) DV port anywhere outside of the case. Open all sectors to find the camera, as there are a lot of different connectivity options. If the camera does not come with an A / V cable with a USB on the other hand, you have to buy a firewire cable. Most camera manufacturers do not include a firewire cable when you purchase the camera.

What happens if the camera is an older model and only has the typical red / white / yellow A / V? Then you need a video converter like Dazzle DVD Recorder, made by Pinnacle. This converter has a USB connector on one end and a socket for connecting video and audio six A / V cable from the camcorder. The video converter converts your video into an AVI (audio video information) and that is what you intend to use for editing.

You can upload your videos or your webcam video on your hard drive or upload them directly to video editing software. If you're brand new to video editing, I highly recommend Windows Movie Maker and if you're ready to edit the movie you might as well just load the program. There are also many video editing programs available at very reasonable prices: Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, and Muvee to name a few. But for the beginner, there's nothing better than Windows Movie Maker, and you should try the first program to be sure how the video editing.

If you can not find Movie Maker on your computer, search for it by pressing the start button and then search. I would suggest you leave out the Windows word from the search so as not to appear throughout the rest of the files related to Windows. If you can not find doing a Google search for Windows Movie Maker and download the latest version because it's free!

After you open the program Windows Movie Maker, go to File, then select Video Capture. Once connected the Dazzle converter you should also have used the Dazzle software CD that activated it. Otherwise, you can go to the Pinnacle site and download the appropriate software for the version of the converter. So when you select capture file you should see the option box as Dazzle capture device.

You will also need to test the audio from the Dazzle box. There is an audio meter that measures the sound level of the video to record a few seconds before you do a lot to capture just to make sure you are getting audio. You can also see that the device has a Dazzle Video Composite and S selection. S Video is a bit 'better quality than composite so if you happen to have a SVideo cable connection available from your video camera or VHS, you should use.

There are several screens in the process of video capture that ask you what you want to label the clips and where you want to archive it. Be specific because once you start the upload will probably put a lot of videos on your hard drive, and being specific will help you find the search result. The My videos folder works well as a storage place, but as you have multiple projects you can start to create specific files for each project.

The last screen of the video capture process that asks you which format you want to capture your video. There are lots of choices, but the two most important are DV AVI and WMV. The default is WMV and is labeled, "Best quality for playback on my computer" because it saves space, but not the best quality. And 'the WMV file format and even if it does not take up more disk space is not only the quality desired, unless you plan to go to all the trouble to edit this video. It will consider whether you have enough disk space to be able to manage the best video quality, but in the long run you'll be happier with the final product. So choose DV AVI if it is available. Then hit Start Capture, and start uploading your videos on your computer.

After loading all your videos, click Stop Capture, and Windows Movie Maker will load the clip into collections. Play it to make sure you are seeing and hearing what you want to upload. Now drag the video clip to the timeline and you are ready to get started editing. There are many free tutorials for Windows Movie Maker on the web, and one of the best is on the Microsoft Web site.

One more thing on video clips on your hard drive. They are very easy to lose! Here's the easiest way to find the video clips. Double-click My Computer on the desktop. Then go to the My Documents folder and find my videos. Double-click My videos, go to the top menu bar and click on Viewed. Select Details and click on Data last modified twice. That will show you the latest video clips stored on your hard drive. I hope this helped you learn how to start the process of video editing, uploading video clips to your computer. Yes, it's a bit 'technical, but stick with it because once you edit a video and amaze your friends and family will all be worth it! ...