Features

It pays to chop out the duff bits before you share your footage with the world.

We all know home videos tend to contain gems hidden among hours of badly shot rubbish. A video editing program enables you to find a few minutes of genuinely watchable video among the hours of tedium. It's also vital if you're shooting from scratch for YouTube: despite the amateur ethos, clips that are well put together will find a more enthusiastic audience. Although there are better programs available, Windows Movie Maker is already on your PC and will usually do the job.

It's baisc, but in some respects not basic enough, as it encourages you to apply daft transitions (effects that lead from one shot to the next) which will just make your production look naff. Avoid the clever ones and stick to Fade, which is always classy. Always alternate between Fade In, From Black and Fade Out, To Black. Ignore all the other effects, except Rotate, which can fix those bits you accidentally shot while holding your mobile phone the wrong way up - so easily done.

	1 You can simply drag a video file from your hard disk onto Windows Movie Maker's storyboard or timeline, whichever is showing. The timeline makes life easier, so click on Show Timeline if the storyboard is currently in view. The video clip should appear in the middle of the screen.

	2 Drag your video clip from the Collection area to the timeline, which represents the whole movie you're making. You can then play the clip by pressing the Play Timeline button, and press it again to pause when you get to a part you want to chop out. Press Ctrl+L to split the video at this point.

	3 Continue playing until you reach the end of the rubbish section. (Of course, this may take trial and error.) Pause and split the video again with Ctrl+L. Select the bad footage in the timeline and press the Delete key to remove it. Click Show Storyboard and choose Video Transitions from the menu above.

	4 Drag the Fade transition into the box between the two clips. Select Video Effects and drag Fade In, From Black onto the first clip. Drag Fade Out, To Black onto the last clip. Add and edit more clips if necessary in the same way. Choose Save Movie File from the File menu, using 'Best quality for playback on my computer'.