Pinnacle VideoSpin 2

Produce your own home movies using this free video editor

You can buy the most expensive video camera, spend forever reading up on advanced movie-making techniques, and go filming in the best locations, but it won't make any difference: your raw footage will still look a mess. The key to producing a quality movie clip is always in the final edit, and just a few minutes spent with VideoSpin can make a huge difference to the end result.

The program starts by displaying the contents of your My Videos folder. If your footage isn't there, then browse to its folder and select the video file. Click the "Show all scenes..." icon (it's beneath the files list, to the left of the spectacles icon) and VideoSpin will detect all the individual scenes that file contains. Now you can drag and drop the particular scenes you want onto the timeline, leaving out any others. Press Play to view the results, then resize clips, drag and drop to rearrange them, or import clips from other movies until you're happy.

You can choose to add transitions in a similar way. Click the transition button, pick a fade, dissolve, wipe or slide, then drag and drop it between two images on the timeline. Resize the transition to prolong the effect, and preview the results.

You might also decide to mix in your own photos, and you can add audio through your own music files, or the bundled sound effects (animal noises, crowd sounds, vehicles, there's plenty on offer if you need atmosphere or comic effects).

And when you've finished, the program can render your video in AVI or other formats, or better still upload it directly to YouTube or Yahoo! Video: very convenient.

Note that there is no MPEG2/MPEG4 export support in the free VideoSpin for legal reasons.

VideoSpin 2 can now support video cameras that capture QuickTime video, support for widescreen YouTube videos, the facility to output your video for viewing on an iPod andmucn more.