Although Windows ships with the free Windows Movie Maker, it's fairly limited and not really suitable for anything but the basic video editing. The snag is, the next stage up means that you really need to know what you're doing. Apple's Final Cut Express or Pinnacle Studio are both home video editing packages, but really suited towards semi-professionals, perhaps who want to produce wedding videos on behalf of their clients.

Pinnacle VideoSpin 1.1 is a completely free video editor that enables you to do all basics with your home movies. Cut, edit and add various transitional effects. Add your own audio track, sounds and then get ready to export to disc or the web. It already has builtin support to upload your video to a streaming site such as YouTube, so you don't need to worry about hosting.

Pinnacle VideoSpin 1.1 download.

Instead of being flexible with consumers who spend money buying genuine DVDs, the manufactures make us sit through 'do not pirate this' videos, before we get to see the main event. We're then only able to see our DVD within our local region, so there's no point brining back a DVD from the States. Want to backup or store your movie on your home media server? Forget it, it's encrypted.

Handbrake 0.9.2 is a free tool that enables you to take a DVD and then remove some of these restrictions, so you can play back content on different forms of media. If you own the original DVD and only intend personal playback, this should be legitimate. The latest version of Handbrake enables you to produce a movie for playback on your iPod Touch or Apple TV, so you can move your favourite videos from DVD to storage on your computer.

We all have old movies we’d like to store and archive, whether they are old VHS cassettes or simply videos we've downloaded from the net and would like to store and watch offline. Life would be so much easier if we could save and edit these movies and then convert into interactive video discs. We could then delete the old movies and store on disc.

MAGIX Movies on CD & DVD 6 enables you to compile and burn Internet movies, digitally archive VHS tapes and easily optimise your digital camcorder recordings.

You can burn your photos onto conventional, low-cost blank DVDs in high-quality HD-DVD format using any standard DVD burner. With the easy-to-use interface, it makes for enjoyable home entertainment. Record, burn, and experience your movies, photos & music on your PC.

With numerous online portals offering film trailers, movie clips and documentary’s we inevitably come across videos which we'd like to keep and browse offline. Unfortunately many of these online portals offer a view-only policy, which is frustrating as this prevents the video from being downloaded.

Ashampoo ClipFisher 1.01 makes it possible for you to obtain such online videos. Simply copy the video’s current http:// address from the web browser and paste it into Ashampoo ClipFisher will then begin downloading the video directly on to your hard drive. Ashampoo ClipFisher 1.01 enables users to obtain view-only videos from portals such as YouTube, VideU, MyVideo, ClipFish and GoogleVideo allowing users to create their own video libraries.

One problem with video-editing software is that they are based around their own licensed codecs. If someone gives you some video for editing, you might not be able to open the video to make the changes. There are so many codecs and different formats that most consumer video editors stick with their own codec and expect you to import the raw video from your camcorder, not import from a local source, such as your hard drive.

VirtualDub 1.6.19 is a freeware video editing tool that's been around for a long while. It's different from other video editors in that it relies on the codecs that you have on your system to open and edit video. If you have something like the K-Lite Codec Pack installed on your system, you'll probably find that you can open and edit most sources of video. However, the video editing tools are rather basic and it will only export as an AVI format, which isn't too good for burning to DVD (however, there does seem to be a third-party MPEG2 module available).

How many of us own a web camera but use it for nothing in particular? Yes, there's always the option to use it with something like Skype or MSN Messenger, but do you really like the idea of someone else seeing you looking unwashed on a Sunday morning? Thought not. Most of us still prefer the anonymity of the phone or typing through messaging, rather than appearing on a webcam. However, you could use your webcam to monitor the security in your room or a room in your house.

Active WebCam 9.0 is the latest version of the advanced web camera software. Believe us when we say this tool has a range of options and can be daunting for webcam software. You can use the technology to set up your webcam as a security device, with motion detection. As soon as anyone enters your room, it starts recording and can upload the images to the web, so you can access the images remotely, keeping an eye on your home.

Capturing video and photos can often be a spur of the moment activity. You don't want then have to hang around, spend time with your DVD authoring suite, setting up the themes and navigation required to create your DVD movie. Sometimes it's great just to be able to grab the raw video and burn it directly to DVD. You don't need the fancy navigation or menus. You can create a DVD movie that starts automatically as soon as you press 'play' on your DVD player.

Sothink Movie DVD Maker 1.0 is a free tool that will do exactly this, it will take your raw video file, enable you to make basic changes to the size of the video and compression required, then will burn it directly to your blank DVD. Once created, simply stick your DVD in your player and it will start immediately.

Buying a webcam made a lot of sense at the time, but how many of you really use it for chatting over the Internet? One option would be to use the camera to record video taken from your camera, for security purposes. If you use the right software, you can set up motion detection so that the camera starts recording as soon as it picks up motion within the room.

Active WebCam 8.3 is advanced web camera software that enables you to use your camera to record video to your computer. You can upload the recorded video (or grabs from the video) to a remote website, enabling you to have a realtime preview of recorded video. Set it up so it only records video when it detects motion and you could be notified when you're away on holiday.

Home movie making isn't always about grabbing video, downloading it to your PC and then spending time touching up, adding effects and making sure it looks really professional. The best home movies are those taken at opportune moments and look rather raw when they are shown to friends and family. What you want to do is take your videos, choose the best video from a selection, then burn them to DVD for preview.

VideoDVDMaker Free 2.3.0.14 is a free video editing and DVD creation tool that enables you to do the above. Everything can be done within one program. Grab your video, connect your camcorder, download to the software, burn to DVD, without requiring an external program.

If VideoDVDMaker Free 2.3.0.14 is the kind of application the meets your requirements, download and see for yourself.

With the ability to shoot and grab video from a mobile phone, the latest craze is to take a video and then share it online, using technology provide by YouTube to host your videos (although YouTube host, you can still embed and view videos from your own homepage). However, there's no easy way to download videos from YouTube for viewing offline, on your computer.

YouRipper 2.10 enables you to grab videos from YouTube and then store them on your computer. Note that the use of this software is for extracting videos for your own personal use only. You do not own the copyright of downloaded videos, so do not share these videos using other distribution methods.

Lecture over. If you're a keen YouTube user, grab YouRipper 2.1 and store your favourite videos on your computer.