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If you’re away from home, say, on a business trip, perhaps out of the country, then it’s easy enough to get Windows Media Center to record your favourite programmes. But why wait until you get home to watch then?

Install the free software package Orb and you can log on to your home PC from almost anywhere in the world, via just about any web-enabled device: PC, laptop, PDA, even mobile phone. You’ll see the video files Media Center has recorded and be able to watch any you like, as well as view your digital photos and play anything in your MP3 collection. With the right kit you can even stream live television across the internet.

1. Get Started

Launch Orb, click Create an account, and enter your email address, a login name and password. These should be easy for you to remember, but hard for others to guess (you don’t want anyone else able to access your PC)

2. Select Content

Choose what you want to access online by checking the relevant boxes for Audio, Photo, Video, TV or Documents. If you’re not sure, leave everything checked right now: it’s very easy to change your settings later on.

3. Stream It

If you have a PC TV tuner and want to stream it online, then leave the I don’t have a set-top box option selected and click Next. Use the tuning window to find and save all your TV channels, closing it when you’re done.

4. Go Green

Click Finish and Orb will place an icon in your system tray. When this turns green it means the program has contacted its server and is ready to be used (you should see a similar Alert message, too). Time to try it out.

5. Log In

Go to another internet-enabled PC, laptop, PDA, or anything else with a browser and media player. Point it at mycast.orb.com, enter the Login and Password you created earlier, then click the Log In button to get connected.

6. Explore

And now you should have access to all the media on your PC. Click Video > Browse Folders to view videos, for instance, Audio to explore everything in your Music folder and Photos to see your digital images – it’s as easy as that.

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Bad home movies? Shudder! They can be longer than many prison sentences, home to multimedia’s worst excesses and, all too often, guaranteed to leave you trying to slit your wrists with a Pringle.

However, with Windows Vista, you have no excuse for such nonsense. None. We’re going to war on bad home movies. Right now!

The good news is that with Movie Maker you immediately avoid the biggest trap. It’s a simple editor that focuses on the important things.

Not only don’t you need hundreds of transitions, effects, and other flashy tools, you’re usually better off without them. It’s not for nothing that the average director’s favourite transition is the humble cut.

Editing in action

Let’s step through a holiday video. Don’t worry about the mouse clicks yet; that’s the easy part. Raw footage is where every project starts. The cardinal rule is: shoot everything you can, then throw out almost as much. A ruthless editor is a good editor.

Exactly what to keep will depend on your subject matter and intended audience, but you’ll never go wrong by treating it as a professional project, rather than doing things you know are wrong.

One thing I always do when starting a new project is to sit down and list everything that annoys me in similar things I’ve seen, and then avoid doing them even if they seem like a great idea at the time.

Here, let’s look at the classic roller-coaster shot. On my list, the number one ‘gotcha’ is the first-person shakycam as someone, usually my father, desperately tries to keep the camcorder to his face.

It never works. Ignoring the blurring of the world, and the sick-making bouncing of the camera on every twist and turn, you’ll never be able to emulate the experience of being on that ride. So what do you do? You film it anyway. The problem isn’t the footage; it’s the execution. You also film the exterior of the ride, and everything else you’re going to cut. Then get the shears.

First of all, the establishing shot. That should be easy enough – especially if the family is there, waving and looking nervously at the ride’s biggest lunch-launching moment. Next, cut – a simple cut, nothing fancy – to the first-person camera, as the rollercoaster car pulls out of the station.

Our list tells us that we don’t want to stick with this too much, so now, we cut to another external shot of the coaster pulling away towards the big loop. Obviously, it’s not your car. That doesn’t matter. As it plummets, snap cut again to the fi rst-person camera, showing a family member’s screaming reaction. Cut back to the external.

If you’ve got a good bit of first-person camera of a drop, or a turn, or a particular bit of scenery, slip it in. Finally, cut to the family waddling uncertainly out of the gates, and closer up shots of reactions; cries of “Again!” or “Never again!”

It’s a simple editing job. One transition (Cut) and one editing tool (Trim). However, when you play the video, nobody will care about the technology behind it, just the result. And believe it or not, that’s the big secret of editing. Simplicity always wins out over glitz, and less really is more.

Of course, there is scope to play around with the more complicated effects as well. If you’re building a montage of photos, picking a transition to go between them can look good. Even then, though, the keep-it simple mantra applies. A page-curl may look good, but a page-curl followed by a barwipe, followed by a dissolve, followed by a shatter is guaranteed to look tacky.

Always try to stick to one effect, one editing style, one (rough) length for your individual segments, and the whole thing will flow. It may seem like overkill for a family video, but when you’ve got the tools to do better, why settle for less?

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