Edit your camcorder footage into something everybody will want to watch!

With summer here, it’s time for holidays, days out and travels with your video camera. Digital camcorders are more affordable than ever, so recording your memories is just a case of pointing and shooting.

The difficult part is turning the results into a professional-looking movie. Fortunately Windows Vista comes bundled with Windows Movie Maker, an easy to use video-editing package that can help you turn a day out into a mini-masterpiece. The secret’s all in the editing.

Editing is more than just assembling video clips into a sequence. It’s both an art and a craft, capable of turning a collection of disparate events into a coherently told story. I’ll be passing on practical tips for using Movie Maker to put together your own day-trip videos. With the craft taken care of, the art part will be up to you.

With digital video, it’s a painless process transferring footage to your computer. Movie Maker has a built-in ‘Import from digital camera’ wizard that holds your hand every step of the way. I’ve given you some more in-depth advice on capturing video elsewhere in this guide, so we can get on to the meat of the project straight away.

Start editing

Windows Movie Maker automatically detects transitions in your footage and creates clips from your imported video. It’s pretty good at this, so you can begin your editing process in the default Storyboard view. You can switch between the simple Storyboard and more complex Timeline views by hitting [Ctrl]+[T]. Drag-anddrop clips from the Collections pane on to the storyboard to quickly build a narrative sequence.

Be selective, though. Click on clips in the Collections section window and hit the space bar to preview before placing them in the storyboard. Much of the footage you shoot won’t be needed – so you can bin many of the clips Windows Movie Maker creates.

You won’t even need all the material in every clip that you do use, either. For example, a 30-second shot of ducks paddling might easily be reduced to 10 or even five seconds in your final movie. Getting rid of this ‘fat’ is the first stage of editing. We recommend using the Split tool to cut down your clips.

Add the clip to the storyboard fi rst, then hit [Ctrl]+[T] to switch back to the timeline. Position the playback head so that it’s in the approximate spot you’d like the clip to begin. You can fine-tune by hitting the [Alt] and arrow keys to advance the play head back or forward a frame at a time. When you’re happy, hit [Ctrl]+[L] to split the clip at that exact point. Select the part you want to remove and hit the delete key. Poof, it’s gone!

Clip your clips

While this is a great way to quickly build a rough-cut of your footage, the devil’s in the detail. You can tweak this quick edit in the timeline using Movie Maker’s most powerful editing weapon, the Trim tool.

Start by playing back your rough cut. Some sections will seem too long, others won’t follow on too well from the footage that precedes it. Click on any clip that needs tweaking in the timeline and hover your cursor over the start of the clip. You can click-and-drag the clip, adjusting its start point. There’s a live preview to help you choose. You can trim the end point of any clip in the same way. If you need a bit more precision, move the playback head to the start or end point you’d prefer and hit [O] to trim the beginning of the clip or [I] to trim the end.

One clever aspect of Movie Maker that’s easy to overlook is that you can visually edit to an audio track. Click the Expand video track icon in the timeline. It looks like a ‘+’ symbol next to the Video track label. This opens the Audio and transition tracks. Next, hover your cursor over the edge of the Timeline panel – your cursor should change to a double-headed arrow.

Click and drag to resize the timeline vertically. This causes the Audio track to grow and the waveform becomes visible. When editing footage with dialogue in it you can use this expanded waveform view to position the playback head more accurately before trimming or splitting a clip. If you have a banging soundtrack in your video you can even use this view to cut to the beat.