Looking for easy video-editing software

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I’ve got a bunch of old family VCR tapes that I’d like to transfer to DVD. I’ve had no problems getting them transferred to my HDD using an ION-Audio VCR2PC. BUT …. the software with the VCR2PC is the pits. It flat doesn’t work with Win7 x64. So, I’m looking for something to easily edit those video files to cut out the Ooopses, join 3 or 4 of the files into one big movie, add a initial menu, and finally burn it all to a DVD. I’ve tried the trial versions of Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas Studio, and Corel Digital Studio. These are all way, way, way too complicated for what I want to do.
Any suggestions ???

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I’ve got a bunch of old family VCR tapes that I’d like to transfer to DVD. I’ve had no problems getting them transferred to my HDD using an ION-Audio VCR2PC. BUT …. the software with the VCR2PC is the pits. It flat doesn’t work with Win7 x64. So, I’m looking for something to easily edit those video files to cut out the Ooopses, join 3 or 4 of the files into one big movie, add a initial menu, and finally burn it all to a DVD. I’ve tried the trial versions of Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas Studio, and Corel Digital Studio. These are all way, way, way too complicated for what I want to do.
Any suggestions ???

Have you tried Windows Movie Maker? – it’s a free download from Microsoft as part of their Windows Live package.

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Gfamily
First of all I want to apologize for not replying sooner but, I was “Out of town” and FAR away from an internet connection. This is my first trip back to main base and internet access.
Windows Movie Maker !!! Never even thought of it, I’ll have to give it a try.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I’ll let you know how it works out.

Chinook[/size][/font][/size]

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Gfamily
First of all I want to apologize for not replying sooner but, I was “Out of town” and FAR away from an internet connection. This is my first trip back to main base and internet access.
Windows Movie Maker !!! Never even thought of it, I’ll have to give it a try.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I’ll let you know how it works out.

Chinook[/size][/font][/size]

Just a warning that you may not be able to do the initial menu using Movie Maker

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There are many other free A/V Editors available too, here are a few of them.
Have fun with it.

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Someone who already is familiar with video editors needs to try this and relate whether it’s useful to the average person:

Lightworks is an Academy and Emmy award winning professional-grade editor with over 20 years of history in the film and broadcast industry. Having cut hundreds of films such as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, Centurion and Shutter Island, it includes a full feature set of editorial tools, from advanced trimming and media management, through to stereoscopic support and realtime effects including multiple secondary colour correctors.

Now going open source and available in public beta: http://www.lightworksbeta.com/

I haven’t tried it myself.

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Someone who already is familiar with video editors needs to try this and relate whether it’s useful to the average person:

Now going open source and available in public beta: http://www.lightworksbeta.com/

I haven’t tried it myself.

Hi, take it from me, light-Works beta is not for the faint of heart !…If your looking for a simple or easy video editor I would stick with Windows Live Movie Maker. I would suggest to anyone thinking about LW to go to the website and log into the forum tab and you will get a good feel for what you will be getting yourself into. It is free & will be released as open source sometime next year. However you will notice reading through the forum posts there are bugs to deal with. I had issues myself with codecs, importing files, crashes. That being said, once the bugs are fixed and final release is out, it will be awesome and well worth your time to learn. Just keep in mind there will be a learning curve.

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I don’t really have an answer but a closely related question. We recently got satellite TV (DirecTV) for the first time and it came with a DVR. We like it so much that the disk is just about full and we want to dump some stuff to a DVD so we can keep it and still keep using the DVR.
Someone suggested plugging an external hard drive into the machine’s USB port but without some type of file explorer like Windows Explorer, I don’t know how that would help.
I read about a contraption called “Convert a Classic” which is a thing with wires designed to take old VCR tapes and connect from a VCR player to a computer where it will convert the captured video into a digital file so it can be burned to a DVD. Would that work coming from a DVR where it is already digital media?
Any other ideas?

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We recently got satellite TV (DirecTV) for the first time and it came with a DVR. We like it so much that the disk is just about full and we want to dump some stuff to a DVD so we can keep it and still keep using the DVR.
Someone suggested plugging an external hard drive into the machine’s USB port but without some type of file explorer like Windows Explorer, I don’t know how that would help.

Some DVRs are designed to use external storage rather than having to change out the internal hard drive. This article has more info: DIRECTV: Tips & Tricks: Connect an External Hard Drive. If you consider how convenient it would be to just grow the library in your DVR, rather than having to record it to a hard drive and then burn a DVD, or buy a DVD recorder, this option could be hard to beat. Of course, if something is priceless and you really want a copy on DVD, then you don’t have a choice…

I read about a contraption called “Convert a Classic” which is a thing with wires designed to take old VCR tapes and connect from a VCR player to a computer where it will convert the captured video into a digital file so it can be burned to a DVD. Would that work coming from a DVR where it is already digital media?

Not sure. Might be copy protection on the files.

Edit: After reading that article further, it seems that you might lose access to your existing library when you add the new drive. Probably worth hitting up the DirecTV forums to see what happened to others.

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This article published today may be useful …..
Video Editing Software: Beyond the Basics

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If I were you, I wouldn’t waste the time trying to do it myself! There’s a website that I’ve used a couple of times for family video editing called Clipik. You submit the content and they edit the video for you. It’s actually really convenient (and affordable!) and they’ve got great customer service.

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If I were you, I wouldn’t waste the time trying to do it myself! There’s a website that I’ve used a couple of times for family video editing called Clipik. You submit the content and they edit the video for you. It’s actually really convenient (and affordable!) and they’ve got great customer service.

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