Beginners guide to PC video editing

If you're new to PC video editing then knowing where to start can be a bit daunting, so hopefully this guide will point you in the right direction.

To start with you will need a few items of equipment

Camcorders/Video Decks

Depending on your requirements or aims there are number of different solutions to discuss, so i will split these up into separate sections.

1.If you are starting from new then i recommend buying a new digital camcorder, this will give you superior video and sound quality as well as making getting started in video editing very simple, so ideal for the beginner. There are thousands to choose from catering for various types of budgets.

2. You may already have an old video deck or camcorder which uses the old analogue outputs such as composite or s-video (be sure to check first what outputs you have).
For this kind of setup you would need a capture card/analogue to digital converter, this is discussed in more detail further on in the article.

A PC for Video Editing

It is now possible to easily capture footage from your Digital Camcorder directly to your PC and edit it.
If you looking at buying a new PC or building a new one then the currents spec's are more then powerful enough ,a typical spec PC these days is a P4, 512Mb Ram, 80Gb HDD, Windows XP or something along those lines.
You could always use your existing PC if you have one, but i wouldn't recommend using anything below a PIII 600.

Additional Hardware

When transferring video from your camcorder to your PC there are a number of additional things to consider depending on the type of camcorder your using.
If you