One advantage of ordering your film transfer on MiniDV tape or portable hard drive is the ability to edit. Debenham Media Group does NOT encourage editing from DVDs (see box below for more details). Using software, you can easily rearrange scenes, add titles, music, narration and effects, do additional color correction, and transform your raw footage into a customized, polished movie for your friends and family to enjoy. And the best part is, you don't need expensive equipment or special training to do it!

If you've purhcased a new PC or Mac in the last few years, then your computer already has editing software on it. Windows XP and Vista include Windows Movie Maker, and Mac OSX includes iMovie. These are both simple, user-friendly editing tools for beginners. While we cannot give specific advice on editing your film transfer, each of these programs includes a help manual, and you can find additional online resources by clicking the appropriate link below:
If you're looking for a more in-depth editing experience, or are editing a High Definition transfer, there are a number of professional-quality programs available for purchase. (Motion JPEG-A files may be edited in iMovie, but maintaining image quality requires carefull attention to the video settings.) Debenham Media Group does not endorse or recommend any specific programs, but some popular programs are Final Cut, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Corel VideoStudio. These programs will have a variety of advanced features, but will usually require some extra computing power and will take more time to learn. They are available in different versions (like "express" or "pro") with certain features added or omitted, so we recommend doing research before purchasing any software. Be aware that older versions may be incompatible with current codecs and/or operating systems. For most of our clients, the pre-installed programs pictured above will be sufficient, and we've outlined some of the basics below.

Before you begin, we recommend a quick check of the program's settings to ensure you're getting the highest quality video. Sometimes programs will default to a lower quality video setting in order to conserve hardware resources, but this can dramatically alter your video. Many problems with image quality can be traced back to an error in the initial settings, so please check carefully.
Windows Movie Maker XP
Windows Movie Maker Vista
Mac OSX iMovie
It is very important to backup your files to another hard drive before editing. In order to do this, the formats of your drives must match. If you order .avi (PC) files from us, your drive will be in NTFS format, which is standard for PCs. However, many external hard drives come setup in FAT32 format. In order to use these drives, you must format them in NTFS, because FAT32 limits files to 4GB in size, and your film transfer files will be approximately 13GB. To format your drive, follow these steps:

1. Double-click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop
2. Right-click on the icon of the drive you want to format and select "Format..."
3. In the drop-menu under "File System" choose "NTFS"
4. In the text box under "Volume Label" type in a name for your drive
5. Click the "Start" button

WARNING: Do NOT format a drive until you have backed up any important files it may contain. Formatting a drive erases all data on the drive.

NTFS format drives are read-only on Macs, which means that using a Mac, you will be able to open and copy the files, but you will not be able to save anything to the drive.

If you order .mov (Mac) files from us, your drive will be in Mac format, and will NOT be readable on PCs.

To format a drive for Mac, follow these steps:

1. Open the "Disk Utility" application
2. Select the drive you want to format from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen
3. Select the "Erase" tab
4. In the drop-menu labeled "Volume Format" select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
5. In the text box labeled "Name" type in a name for your drive
6. Click the "Erase" button
Now you're ready to edit. Using controls very similar to cutting and pasting text in a word processing program, you can select a length of video, or "clip," from your base file and drop it into the timeline. Since the process is entirely digital, you can easily move clips around at any time without damaging them, so feel free to experiment as much as you want.

Once you've got a sequence of clips, you can insert transitions between them, such as dissolves or fades. The software includes a variety of transitions to choose from. The title tool will let you put text on top of the image, and you can add transitions and effects to text as well. You can also incorporate still photos into your timeline by importing them into the editor.
If you're working from MiniDV tapes, you'll need to capture the footage, or convert the data on the tape into files your computer can work with. You'll need your MiniDV camcorder and firewire cable. Be sure to capture using the "device native" setting -- with MiniDV tapes this is "DV" -- to get maximum quality video. Give yourself some time for this step, because digital tape captures occur in real time, i.e. three hours of footage will take three hours to capture. It's worth the wait - the capture is 100% lossless, so you'll maintain the high quality of your film transfer. (If you'd rather get right to the editing, you can skip this step by ordering the hard drive from us.)

If you're working from the hard drive, we've already done this step for you. You can start by importing the files into the the editor. This is basically just telling the software where the files it will be working with are located. Again, be sure to check your settings to make sure you're getting the highest possible video quality.
Using the audio timeline, you can add music, narration or sound effects to your video. You can import audio files in much the same manner as you imported the video files earlier. The two timelines line up, so that any audio you add will play at the same time as the video above it. If you have a computer microphone and want to add narration, the software includes a function that will play the video and record your voice as you watch.

When you've finally got your timeline the way you want it, you can export it into a movie file, which you can save to a variety of digital media or upload to YouTube or your personal website. And if you save the project file as well, you can go back at any time and make changes. Don't be afraid to experiment - as long as you still have the original files or MiniDV tape, your footage is safe.
Important Information About Hard Drives
MiniDV tapes and hard drives allow for exact frame by frame editing on your computer. DVDs, on the other hand, use MPEG-2 recording, which makes frame by frame editing difficult or impossible depending on your software. MPEG-2 editing loses quality with each editing generation, whereas firewire captures of MiniDV tape and file transfers between hard drives are lossless. Also, DVDs have a maximum data rate of 10Mb/s, compared with the 25Mb/s data rate of MiniDV tapes and .avi or .mov files.
A Word of Caution Regarding DVDs