What do I need to create my own videos?

[Rob P]

Novice requires help!

Le Mans has forced me into investing in a digi camcorder. I want to carry out simple editing on my PC, add music and text then burn to DVD.

Will a £300 "entry level" camcorder do all these things or do I need to up the budget?

I guess video editing is power hungry so would a Intel Duel Core 3Ghz, 1GB RAM do the job?

Any help appriciated

[Platinum]

My camera (not camcorder) came with a cheapo video editing suite "Video Impression 2". It allows you to put together a simple video, add text, narate etc; then you can choose between different save to hard drive or DVD/CD in a variety of file formats.

I would have thought if you were to buy a digicam, it would come with a basic editing software.

As for the processing my 2.4ghz 768mb ram seems to cope OKish (output = high quality windows media format.)

Edited by Platinum on Thursday 22 June 21:02

[Rob P]

Thanks

Found muvee autoproducer on my PC. Its basic but allows video and stills to be put together with music and captions into a MPEG.

[Fishy Dave]

Rob P said:

Novice requires help!

Le Mans has forced me into investing in a digi camcorder. I want to carry out simple editing on my PC, add music and text then burn to DVD.

Will a £300 "entry level" camcorder do all these things or do I need to up the budget?

I guess video editing is power hungry so would a Intel Duel Core 3Ghz, 1GB RAM do the job?

Any help appriciated

Your camcorder will be just fine, as will your pc for the moment. Having a decent graphics card will also help, as will plenty of hard disk space.

A free bit of software will be ok to start with (could try Windows Movie Maker), but it is worth paying out for something like Pinnacle Studio, which is nice and easy to use and can give decent results too. I used this for the first two years of editing.

Have you already bought the camcorder btw?

Cheers, Dave