Bits'n'Bytes

As heard on CJCD

Episode 45

Lots of you probably have taken advantage of the fact that consumer electronics have gotten cheaper and cheaper to buy in recent years. Many of you now have digital camcorders to record all your family events and lots of other zany stuff. Now that you have it on tape, what can you do with it? Well, with Windows XP, Microsoft includes a program called Windows Movie Maker that makes transferring your clips to your computer and editing them a real snap.

Most digital video cameras will transfer your clips through a USB2 or Firewire cable to the My Videos folder inside your My Documents folder on your computer. This is where Windows Movie Maker gets your clips from. If you save them to a different folder, you can import them into Windows Movie Maker's Collections folder so you can work with them. Now, if you have an older camera with the red, white and yellow RCA cables, you'll have to get an extra card installed on your computer so you can import through it, but once they're on your computer, the rest of the process is the same.

You can use Windows Movie Maker to drag your clips down to what's called the story board. Then, you can switch to the timeline view and edit the starting and ending points of the clips. You can overlap clips if you want, you can add your own music to the clip and adjust if the clip is louder than the music or if the music is louder than the clip. Switching back to the story board view, you can add transitions between clips, like a checkerboard fade, or whatever tickles your fancy at the time.

Once you're finished with your editing, there are several different options for saving the file, depending on what you plan on doing with the clip once you're done. Uploading to YouTube is a popular choice, or you can save it to DVD so you can play it back on your tv at home.

Considering the program is included free with Windows, it's a very easy to use and powerful tool for the home video editor. Play around with it and see what masterpieces you can create!

Stay tuned next week when I talk about cleaning up your hard drive.

I’m Computer Dave, thanks for your time.