Use Your PC To Put Home Movies Onto DVD

by Ralph Bond, Consumer Education Manager, Intel Corp.
(NAPSA)-With new PC technology, families can give their home movies the star treatment.
Virtually any consumer with a PC, a digital camcorder and new software programs can turn home movies into entertaining, fun-to-watch video productions. And with today's state-of-the-art PCs featuring DVD recorders, you can make DVDs that can be played in a standard DVD player and watched on the family TV.
*    Plan ahead: Gather up VHS, Hi8 analog or digital videotapes. Pick a theme-your wedding, a child's first year, holidays or a special birthday. Find the scenes you want to preserve as DVDs before you fire up the PC.
*    Get your movies onto the PC: A digital camcorder offers the easiest way to get both new and old home movies onto the PC. New movies captured with a digital camcorder can be transferred directly to a PC using a "FireWire" connector and cable. FireWire is a built-in feature of new camcorders and most high-performance PCs. If you have VHS or Hi8 movies, your digital camcorder can make copies and send them to the PC through the same FireWire link.
*    Add the personal touch: Once home movies are stored on your PC's hard drive, add creative opening and closing credits and titles, transitions, music, narration and Hollywood-style effects using editing software priced at less than $100. Pinnacle System's Pinnacle Express or Pinnacle Studio 7, Roxio's Video Wave 6 and Ulead's DVD Movie Factory are all tailored for beginners. Each program uses pre-designed templates and "drag-and-drop" mouse operations to simplify the editing experience.
*    "Burn" your movies: When your masterpiece is ready, record or "burn" it to a CD or DVD disc. Video Wave 6, Pinnacle Express, DVD Movie Factory and Sonic's MyDVD software have the ability to burn standard CD-R or DVD recordable discs with menu buttons and chapter titles for easy viewing.
*    Enjoy the show: Watch your renewed video on DVD in front of the living room TV. The only thing left to do is make the popcorn.
Making home movies requires significant PC processing power. For a fun experience, your best bet is to use a PC equipped with an Intel¨ Pentium¨ 4 processor and the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. Lots of hard drive capacity (60 gigabytes or more) and a good dose of memory (256 megabytes of RAM) are recommended.
For more information, visit www.intel.com.

With new software and a high-performance PC, home movies can be made into DVDs.