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124 P a r t I I Producing Your YouTube Videos

Choosing a Video-Editing Program

In the not-so-distant past, if you wanted to edit a video, you had to use an expen-
sive dedicated video-editing console, such as the ones found in local and network
television studios. Not so today—any moderately powered personal computer,
equipped with the right software, does the job quite nicely and at a much lower
cost. Today’s video-editing software lets you cut and rearrange scenes, add fancy
transitions between scenes, add titles (and subtitles), and even add your own music
soundtrack. The results are amazing!

There are four tiers of video-editing programs available, easily identifiable by price.
The first-tier programs are free, the second-tier programs cost around $100, the
third-tier programs run between $200 and $600, and the top tier costs $800 or
more. We examine each tier separately.

Tier One: Free Programs

The first tier of video-editing programs is one of the most popular—because the
software is free! In reality, these programs come bundled with your computer’s
operating system, which means there’s one version for Windows and another for the
Mac.

For the typical YouTube video producer, these programs do a good job. They
include basic editing features, as well as scene transitions, titles, and other similar
capabilities. They’re not quite as high powered or flexible as the higher-priced pro-
grams, but how much power and flexibility do you need when creating videos for
YouTube?

Note

You might also have received a video-editing program when you purchased
a camcorder. Some manufacturers offer their own video-editing programs or
“lite” versions of other popular programs.

Windows Live Movie Maker

If your computer is running Microsoft Windows, you have access to an easy-to-use
video-editing program. In Windows XP and Windows Vista, Windows Movie
Maker was included free with the operating system. In Windows 7, you can down-
load the latest version of this program, now called Windows Live Movie Maker, as
part of Microsoft’s free Windows Live Essentials suite of supplemental applications
for Windows.