Information Review

The home movie video. It doesn't get any better than that. All of your family members and friends want to spend two hours watching your vacation videos, right? When you’re making home movies, it’s easy to just pick up your camcorder and press “record.” Sometimes you’ll record unforgettable moments, and end up making home movies that will be treasured forever. But, sometimes pressing record randomly means pressing your luck. Instead of making home movies your family can enjoy, you end up with lousy footage that’s not worth watching. But you can change all that by simply applying a few simple video capturing and editing techniques.

Read the Manual: be sure to familiarize yourself with your camcorder before you begin recording for real.

Perform a test run: It's always a good idea to try out all of those manual options (and watch the results) before you pull your camcorder out to shoot something important.

Make a Plan: Start by remembering that you are telling a story. Remember what you like when you hear a story. You want it to be short, entertaining and to the point. Apply that simple rule to your own video.

Lights: Plenty of light will make an incredible difference in the quality of your video footage. Shooting outside will give you the best results, but if you’re shooting inside, try to turn on as many lights as possible, and bring them close to your video subject.

Recording Audio: Don’t just trust your camera to work best on its automatic settings. Check the audio with headphones, if possible, and check the video footage by looking through the eyepiece. The eyepiece gives you a better view than the flip-out screen, because you won’t be seeing any reflections or be influenced by external light.

Hold the Shot: Hold every shot for few seconds. This can seem like an eternity, but you’ll thank yourself later when you’re watching or editing the footage. It may feel like you’ve got enough footage after recording for only 2 or 3 seconds, but those few seconds will fly when you start editing your video.

Capture behind the scenes: Never fall in love with your shots, or to put it more concisely, less is more. Most people shoot the same things over and over again. Learn to pick the best shot and go with it, Try talking to people about what's going on, capture some scenes before and after the event.

Now that you've shot the perfect vacation video, it’s time to edit it down to a finished movie that you can show to your family and friends. Video editing programs allow you to create and modify video files and export them in a number of formats. While using such programs you will most likely encounter tasks such as video cropping, video/audio transitions, creating/adding special effects and titles. For those starting out in video editing, my best recommendation is Windows Movie Maker and if you are ready to edit your footage you might as well upload it right to that program. There are also many very reasonably priced video editing programs available: Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, and Muvee, Ulead Video Studio just to name a few. But for the beginner, there's nothing better than Windows Movie Maker, and you should try that program first to make sure you like video editing. Here is guide how to use Windows Movie Maker.

When you’re done creating your videos you can even upload them to video sharing sites like Youtube to share your videos with the world for fun or to get traffic back to your website.

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