Video Editing

If you own a video camera and still don't have all of those tapes on your commuter or a DVD, then now is the time to do it. The most popular recording medium now is Mini-DV. Mini_DV allows you to transfer video to your computer for editing via FireWire. FireWire is also referred to as Ilink or IEEE 1993. Firewire makes transferring video easy: connect the camera to the computer, turn the camera on, and then use your favorite editing software to edit the video. If you do not have video editing software, you can use the built in Windows Movie maker. But in my opinion, it was not the best video editing software ever made. There is lots of software out there that give you more advanced options. I personally use Adobe Premiere 2.0 Pro, although Adobe has come out with a new CS3 version. If you have the 2.0 version of the software, it is a lot cheaper to upgrade. You can check the program out here.
But, if you do not want to pay $800.00 for editing software, there are plenty other options that will work. A lot of people have their favorites, so please comment if you have any suggestions.

Here are a couple of suggestions as to software that you might consider for video editing.

Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus

Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum Edition

Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Suite

Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0

A lot of the pro use two monitors, (screens) when video editing. This is so that you can have more space when working with video. Not any computer can do this though. Your graphics card has to be capable of two monitors. If you card can support the feature, there will be two spots to plug monitors in at the back of the computer. Some cards, will have one VGA output and one DVI output. New monitors give you the option of using DVI or VGA. My graphics card has one VGA and one DVI. I have two VGA monitors so I could not use the dual monitor feature. But if you search on Ebay, you can find little adapters that will convert DVI to VGA. They are real cheap too. Just search on Ebay for "DVI to VGA". In order to take full advantage of dual monitors, I had to update the graphics card Drivers.
Here are some pictures of my setup in my computer room.