One problem with video-editing software is that they are based around their own licensed codecs. If someone gives you some video for editing, you might not be able to open the video to make the changes. There are so many codecs and different formats that most consumer video editors stick with their own codec and expect you to import the raw video from your camcorder, not import from a local source, such as your hard drive.

VirtualDub 1.6.19 is a freeware video editing tool that's been around for a long while. It's different from other video editors in that it relies on the codecs that you have on your system to open and edit video. If you have something like the K-Lite Codec Pack installed on your system, you'll probably find that you can open and edit most sources of video. However, the video editing tools are rather basic and it will only export as an AVI format, which isn't too good for burning to DVD (however, there does seem to be a third-party MPEG2 module available).

05 Jun 2007