Chapter sixteen. Playing and Editing Digital Movies

IN THIS CHAPTER

Introducing Windows Movie Maker 320

Assembling Your Source Material 323

Editing Your Video 326

Saving Your Movie 333

The Bottom Line 334

If you're like most of your neighbors, you have a camcorder, and a lot of old videotapes. You use your camcorder to take what we used to call home movies. And most of your home movies sit, unwatched, somewhere in the back of your closet.

One reason Americans don't watch more home movies than they do is because the movies are well, because they're not very good. You shoot and you shoot, and everything you shoot goes on tape. The only editing you do is "in camera," as the pros say. So you end up with a half hour's worth of good scenes scattered throughout a two-hour tape.

Wouldn't it be great if you could edit your home movies? If you could make them better?

You know, if you cut out all the dull sequences, insert some smoother transitions between scenes, maybe even add some titles and background music, you might have something worth watching. That sounds like a lot of work, though. And something that probably requires a few thousand dollars worth of professional video-editing equipment.

Except that it doesn't.

All those video-editing capabilities are now built into Windows XP. The Windows Movie Maker (WMM) utility, first introduced in Windows Me, is an easy-to-use video-editing program. All you have to do is hook up your camcorder or VCR to your PC, then you're ready to edit your home movies on your personal computer, digitally.

The results will impress you.