How to edit video

[Karla Dorman]

Can upload video to YouTube, but what's the best way to edit? That's not complicated (kind of computer illiterate) and free (due to budget restraints)?

How do you add music to your video? (I usually go to onetruemedia.com, but they don't have much in the way of music selection unless you're a member.)

Thanks for any help in advance -

 

[D. Hayes]

Karla if you're running windows you should have a program called windows movie maker. It's free and actually one of the best and simplest video editing programs for novice editors. You can add photos, music, overlap audio with music, merge video, add titles, special effects of sorts. Really it's good stuff.

 

[Darren Addy]

Karla,
I agree with starting with what you've got (or can get) for free to start with. A few links for you:
How to Use:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx
Getting Started:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/default.mspx
LOTSA info:
http://www.papajohn.org/
A few "gotchas" to be aware of:
http://beccatoria.livejournal.com/68259.html

You can also search YouTube for "Windows Movie Maker" (and perhaps the word "tutorial") and gets lots of show-and-tell.

As far as music goes, another good source for free music is danosongs.com.

More fun can be had learning how to edit audio with the free program Audacity and doing similar search tricks (as above) to learn how to use it to edit audio. It is pretty amazing, particularly for free.

 

[Austin Marti]

There is another free program to edit with that I know of, very similar to Windows Movie Maker as far as quality and options go.

VideoSpin by Pinnacle

Good luck!