* When I have my video loaded, I don't know where to start...what is a good methodology to use?

* I find myself wanting to do way too many effects, because they are so cool. I get so caught up in them, I lose track of what I am doing. What basic effects should I start with?

- You won't know what to do with your video if you don't know what do you want to do with it in the first place. I know this sounds dumb, but I am trying to say that you should first know what are you trying to achieve with your video, what is its purpose, its goal, its reason, its message, and possibly its audience. Then you have to figure out what do you want your layout to look like. You need to have an idea of what do you want your video to be and look like! If that's not clear in your head, you will waste a lot of time wondering what do at each step, because you don't have a big picture of what you want.

- Now a more direct answer;
1. Know your timeline! To me, this is probably the most important thing. If you know how do you want to lay out your timeline, and place your clips accordingly, one third to one half of your editing is done.
So, first step is to lay out your clips properly on the timeline, one after another, in the sequence you want them to be in the final video.
2. Do the most basic editing first, like cropping your clips, putting and connecting them together!
3. Now you can do your effects. I would recommend that you start out with the simpler ones, like transitions. And don't overuse them! They may look cool to you in the beginning, because it is exciting to see how you're able to manipulate the video and achieve the effects you have so far only seen done by others on TV and movies. And the audience may or may not be captured by your effects at first, but they will pretty soon get bored by a video cr**full of effects.
The most important effect in the video is proper layout with basic transitions, and probably even more importantly, the content of the video, and its final message. All those shiny effects will most probably make your video look totally amateurish!
After you basic editing mentioned in the first two steps, only add effects where they seem to be necessary!
4. Finally, save your projects every few minutes as .veg files. These files are pretty much text files that contain all the steps you did in your project, and the information about your clips or other media used in the project. They don't contain your media files, so don't move your media files (audio, video, images) that you are using in your project until you finish it!
Once you are done, and have the video looking the way you want, you can save it as an entirely separate video file, either for distribution over the Internet, or for DVD.
You do that by chosing "Render As..." instead of "SaveAs...". Then you chose MPEG-2 format, and DVD template.

- If you want to play with a lot of effects, get a few short clips, and experiment with them, whenever you have time for that! That way you will see their impact, and the impact of their settings. Trust me, you'll get bored with the quickly, and will realize that they are only good when needed!

Don't be afraid to experiment with stuff!

Here's my advice (from another newbie)...

First of all, don't start with a "real" project. Don't capture an hour worth of video, and try to start out editing it with the intent of making a DVD.

Instead, start with a little project called "Test" or similar. Grab some still photos -- anything will do. Shoot some video just for this project -- keep the clips just 5 or 10 seconds long, maybe just a minute or two all together. Maybe shoot something as a story, something as simple as following your cat around, or watching a kid pour a bowl of cereal. You'll see that you want a mix of wide shots and of close-ups.

Now, use this little test project to learn how to drag items to the timeline, how to "trim" them (take off the beginning and/or end of a little video segment, to keep just the "good" part of the clip). Experiment all you want. Try the transitions in between clips. Try the effects. Ctrl-stretch an event to get slow motion. See what effects can actually improve your video. I find myself using the "Brightness and Contrast" effect on a LOT of clips, which otherwise might seem washed out.

Learn how to do all these things on a test project, and it won't be so scary when you want to do something on a "real" project. Also, you can play to your heart's content with all the flashy transitions here, and maybe get it out of your system.

I have a "test" project that I started months ago, when I first got VMS. Whenever I want to learn a new feature, I open up Test, and play around with: "parent/child compositing", "film effects", "track motion", etc.

In general, simple cross-fades (where the end of an event fades out as the next event fades in) work out well most of the time -- or maybe a simple cut, where one event immediately cuts to the next. Use the other transitions sparingly, when there is a big change of some kind -- maybe to introduce "day 2 of our vacation", or when changing from "here's the baby when she's six months old" to "here's the video from Christmas".

Tim L

>You'll see that you want a mix of wide shots and of close-ups.

Don't forget to get some establishing shots so that there's a sense of 'place'. It's also worth taking a few seconds of nothing in particular so that you've got some of the background noise available - you can use it to replace those sudden, unwanted noises that happen just as you're videoing something interesting!

Ian G.