What Do You Know About Video Editing Software

Once you've captured a selection of home movie clips in your computer, it's inevitable that you'll be thinking in terms of tidying up the sequences by cutting out the obviously bad bits, rearranging them, adding titles, music, and so on. That's where things really get exciting.

Although Windows Movie Maker and Apple iMovie might well satisfy your home video needs for some time to come, there's now a wide choice of low-cost digital video editing packages that you might also consider. These range from highly popular programs like Ulead's very successful Video Studio, to Pinnacle's own Studio series of low cost programs.

Unlike Movie Maker and iMovie (which both rely on partner products to extend to disk burning capabilities), these programs enable you to undertake the complete workflow from initial capture to editing to DVD menu creation and burning of the disk. Another increasingly popular program is Adobe Premiere Elements, which possesses many of the on screen characteristics and features of its professional big brother, Premiere Pro.

One thing that becomes apparent is that although all these programs have their own identifiable on screen design and layout, the actual screen components are very similar. It's just that things are in different places. All the programs have somewhere to display the available clips (the clip bin); they have a place to play a selected clip or sequence (the preview window) and a space in which to assemble the clips (the timeline) running along the bottom of the screen. It's on the timeline that the real creative stuff takes place, and where your movie project will be assembled.

You'll see that the timeline is not only where your home movie video clips can be assembled starting from the left and running to the right but also where you can add titles, music, and effects. Additional tracks are provided in even the most basic applications, enabling you to build up a very professional looking and sounding movie. Although each program differs slightly in terms of how these options are made available to you, you'll find that the ease with which you can actually progress from one to another means that the underlying functions and features are fairly common to all.

As you arrange clips on the timeline, you'll discover that it's easy to drag them from one location to another to reorganize the order of clips in the sequence. You can trim the duration of a clip or if it isn't up to your expectations, simply delete it from the sequence. Note that, in most cases, the clip won't be deleted forever; it's simply removed from the current timeline.