ok got loads of footage of hurricain wilma how much advanced editing can I do ?

[jamieuk]

Hi I was lucky anuff to survive hurricaine wilma in mexico. me and the mrs whent a way with another couple and I managed to record loads of good footage of are holiday + the nightmares of the living with the hurricain.

I won the raffle so it has been left to me to transfer the tapes from my camcorder to DVD + edit so we can all watch on friday with are families as they are doing a welcome home/survive/ party.

how much editing can you do with these tapes ? is it possible to.....

1. add music to certain parts of the video so it relates to the feelings we had at the time. example - " were all going on a summer holiday" (cliff richard) for the start of the video ........ I wouldnt use that song but just as a exaple lol

2. is it possible to make bubbles apear above peoples heads at certain points with writing in it.... example my mate is ****** on the holiday footage and for a bubble to apear to say " I have had to much tequila"

3. is it possible to "fade certain bits" so it slows down and pauses on a certain bit then fades in to another bit.. hopefully you understand what I mean from this.

4. at the end of the video I would like to create a blank page which would say something around the lines of " with love to all are family who kept strong for us all threw the ruff times and for all the mexicain workers who helped us survive"....... I wouldnt exactly put anything like this put is there any way I can do this in any way ?????????

5. any more cool things I could do ??

thanks for your help guys !!

[jggimi]

We don't know if your camcorder is analog or digital. If digital and "DV" format, it can be copied from your camcorder to your computer's hard drive via an IEEE-1394 ("FireWire") connection. If analog, you will need analog capture equipment. In both cases, you will need *plenty* of hard drive space. IIRC, DV consumes about 12MB of disk space per second of video -- analog capture can be 1GB/min or more.

If you don't have an analog capture card or a FireWire port on your PC, you will have to acquire the appropriate hardware. You will probably want another disk drive, too.

There are guides and FAQs for both analog and DV capture available, using free software, that you obviously have missed.

Normally, I would send you to those. But .... you don't seem to have a great deal of time, if you want a finished DVD by Friday.

I recommend a commercial, "consumer grade" editing suite that can 1) capture digital or analog video -- assuming you have the appropriate hardware -- 2) can do the editing you want to do, 3) can encode and author a DVD, and 4) burn it. These are all around USD$100.

If you have a broadband connection capable of downloading 120MBs of software, you might try Ulead's VideoStudio -- they offer a 30-day trial for download. www.ulead.com.