Edit your home videos using the free Pinnacle VideoSpin
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's easy to be put off video editing for life if you install and use an application such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro from Apple. These video-editing tools are so advanced it's difficult to know where to start. This is why Apple released Final Cut Express (and the more basic iMovie) and Adobe have released 
Most digital camera users will take plenty of pictures, all of the time. It's really easy. You don't need to worry about running out of film. You take the images, upload to your computer, wipe from the camera. The same theory applies to users who are in to home video. Grab as much footage as possible, upload to your computer, edit as required.
It's really easy to forget to set the video recorder or your Sky+ box before you leave home in the morning. Indeed, you might be at work and realise that you're simply not going to get back home to keep up with Neighbours.
These have been floating around on the Internet for a few days now, but they're a must-see for Office fans. Yes, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant get involved with some professional training for Microsoft UK employees. David Brent is back and this time he's offering both his professional advice and, at the same time, using the opportunity to pitch for the role of Microsoft UK's MD.
Rumours are growing that Apple are developing a paid for movie
service through thier hugely successful 
Internet Archive is a vast and free media library, mostly comprising
of out-of-copywrite texts, audio, video, and software for the general public to
use at their leisure. It’s a library in the true educational sense, with much
of it aiming to “preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to
them”. So, in amoungst the old cartoons and recordings you can often find the
odd gem; be it a grainy Bob Dylan recording or 
