Help my first try at editing my digital tapes

daftbatty

This is long overdue I have 15 full tapes of recordings that I would like to edit and organise. For example they cover 5 years of my grand daughters life, birth, Christmas etc. How do I get all these clippings into chronological orders and in one place, same with other things like holidays etc all spread across the tapes? I was thinking of using movie maker, can someone tell me how I should start so I dont chop anything out in error. A real idots guide is required. Thank you

penrhyn

Tapes you say. What format are they? Betamax, VHS, 8mm, DV?
Do you have the means to transfer these onto your PC?
If for example you have Mini VV tapes then you would need a camcorder and PC with firewire interfaces and the appropriate leads.
If the source material is analogue then you will need a suitable hardware converter.

totalsolutions

Perhaps trial Adobe Premier Elements. Get the hardware right +fast PC and loads of Ram. Play all the footage into the pc hard disc and go from there. All editing is then done electronically and no damage to the original tapes. Editing into chronological order is then up to you as director, adding extra footage, sound and graphics as you see fit. Good luck and have fun.

daftbatty

thank you yes I have the means to get the data from the tape onto my PC I just use a lead direct from my digital camcorder so that bit is ok. I was going to use Movie maker (free) but someone mentioned trial Adobe is this better? and what do you mean by lots of RAM, my computer is 3 years old, what do you think the minimum speck would be?

Marty_J

If you know anyone with a Mac, iMovie would make this super easy for you.

rmg1

Windows Movie Maker is a good (free) piece of software I've used a few times. It's a good starting point for the novice (like me) and virtually indestructible unless you want to make movies of over an hour.
It struggled when I tried that, but splitting them in half and stitching them back together was straightforward enough.

tomstickland

Movie maker is pretty reasonable. You need to limit the size of the projects to keep it reliable though.
It's not so much the length, but the number of edits that causes trouble.