In: Categories » Computers and technology » Windows XP » Trimming Movies with Panache
Unfortunately, it’s rare that a video clip will begin or end precisely where you want; most clips have extraneous stuff that needs to be trimmed away. Instead of loading your clips in a full-blown video editor like Adobe Premiere which is a much more powerful and ponderous program than you need for this simple task MyDVD gives you the ability to trim the beginning and ending of your clips from within the program. Truly sassy! This great feature even goes one better: It doesn’t actually remove any material from your video clips, so you don’t have to spend any time saving or converting them (which can take minutes, even on the fastest PC). Instead, the MyDVD trim process only marks the beginning and ending points that you choose for a clip, leaving the original digital video file untouched on your hard drive. To trim a clip, follow these steps:
1. Navigate through the menus that you’ve created until you find the menu screen with the video that you need to trim.
2. To begin trimming the clip, double-click it. Three thumbnail frames show you the start of the clip, the frame used as the button image, and the ending of the clip.
3. Click and drag the green slider (which corresponds to the Start Frame) to the desired location where you want the clip to begin. MyDVD automatically updates the Start Frame preview to show you the new starting frame. You can also click the slider that you want to move and press the leftand right-arrow keys to move backward and forward one frame at a time.
4. Click and drag the red End Frame slider to the desired location where the clip should end. You can use the updated End Frame preview image to gauge where you are in the clip.
5. To choose a different frame for the image that will appear on the video button, click the thumbs-up marker and drag it until you see the desired frame in the Button Image preview image. This is a great feature when your video starts with a black screen.
6. When you’re done trimming, click OK to set the markers and return to the menu screen. If you’d rather start over and try again, click Reset and follow these steps anew. Trimming a video clip is different from actually editing the video. But if you happen to have both MyDVD and ArcSoft ShowBiz installed on your PC, you can click the Edit Video button in the top toolbar to edit your video clips.
Time to Preview
Would a Hollywood studio release a movie these days without a trailer? Not very likely . . . and MyDVD allows you to preview your disc before you burn it. I’m all for avoiding the possibility of wasting a recordable DVD because something was wrong with my videos or my menu system. In Preview mode, MyDVD will display your project just as it will appear in a DVD player. You even get a virtual remote control that you can use to test out your menu system. To enter Preview mode at any time, click the Preview button on the bottom of the screen (or press Ctrl+P). Click any button to simulate the press of that button on your DVD player’s remote control. Click the Title button to display the Title menu, and click the Menu button to display the last menu that you used. After you’ve checked each button and function on your menu, click the Stop button on the remote control to exit Preview mode. You can then make any changes that you need to make to your menu, or you can record your project to disc.
Burning Your DVD and Celebrating Afterwards
Here it is the moment that you’ve been waiting for with such anticipation! But before you decide to spend a disc on your project, I should mention that MyDVD can actually create two different types of DVD videos:
- A standard DVD video: This is a physical DVD-R that can be loaded in a DVD player.
- A DVD volume: If you select this method of recording a DVD, the files aren’t actually burned to a disc. Instead, MyDVD records them to a separate folder on your hard drive, where you can either record them later or view them with a software DVD player like Sonic’s CinePlayer. (This is a great option if you’re working on a laptop and you’re using an external FireWire or USB 2.0 DVD recorder, but you don’t happen to have the recorder handy. You can save the project as a DVD volume and burn it later when you get back to your home or office.) To burn a DVD video from your project, follow these steps:
1. Load a blank disc into your recorder.
2. Click the Burn button on the remote control pad on the bottom of the MyDVD window (or press Ctrl+D). MyDVD prompts you to save the project.
3. Click Yes, type a filename, and then click Save.
4. If you have more than one recorder on your system, click the Device drop-down list to choose which drive will be used.
5. Click in the Copies text box and type the number of copies that you want to make. I recommend leaving the Write Speed setting at Auto; that way, your DVD recorder can record at a slower speed if the DVD media that you’re using doesn’t support full-speed burning.
6. Click OK and sit back to watch your recorder do the work. To save a DVD volume, follow these steps:
1. Choose Tools -> Make DVD Folder. MyDVD displays the Browse for Folder dialog box.
2. Click the location where the DVD volume folder should be stored.
3. Click OK to begin creating the DVD volume.
legal notice
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Web-articles is a free articles resource.
Suggestion: If you need fresh, daily updated content for your website, feel free to use our service. Click here for more information.
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above.
related articles
As you know (or if you don’t, go back and read article 8), your computer’s BIOS contains instructions that the computer uses to interact with devices such as video cards, as well as the commands necessary to start Windows. When a new version of Windows appears, or when new devices or new pro- cessors become available, the BIOS manufacturer may update the BIOS in order to allow it to recognize and support the newer hardware or software. For example, if Intel or AMD adds features to new CPU chips, or if a new and be...
2. Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses
External attacks on your computer come in many forms: viruses, worms, spyware, and Trojan horses are just a few of the mostcommon types. This malware, or malicious soft- ware, presents threats to your computer’s operation, the security of your data, your privacy, and your identity. If your computer is doing something strange for no apparent reason, a virus or spyware program could be to blame. Sometimes, though, there are no visible signs. For example, a virus could quietly fill up your hard drive with garbage data, or spywar...
3. Firewall Software under Windows XP
Stopping Break-ins: Firewalls It may seem like an odd form of entertainment, but there’s a whole sub- culture out there of people who spend their time trying to break into other people’s computers. Some of these people are just in it for the game, but others are cracking into computers as a way to steal personal and corporate information. As anyone who has ever had to deal with identity theft can tell you, taking back control of your life after someone has stolen your credit card numbers, co...
4. Internet connection and Windows XP
The Internet has become such an essential part of most people’s experience that it’s sometimes difficult to know where your own computer stops and the Internet begins. For most of us, it doesn’t matter if a particular resource is physically located on a local hard drive (one inside your PC or a network server) or a computer halfway around the world. Either way, it’s just a matter of keystrokes and mouse clicks to view it on the screen or listen to it through speakers plugged into your computer. ...
5. How to setup a local network in Windows XP
LOCAL NETWORK PROBLEMS Any time two or more computers and their related devices are under the same roof, they should probably connect to one another through a etwork. Networking allows users to share files and printers and to share access to the Internet through a common modem or broadband connection. Windows XP includes tools and wizards that make it relatively simple to set up a network, but a network is always more complicated than an isolated, stand-alone computer. Network problems don’t oft...
6. Windows XP activation and hardware problems
Not every computer failure is caused by a software issue. Many problems that appear to be related to Windows are actually caused by some kind of hardware malfunction or by a conflict between two or more incompatible hardware components inside the computer. This article describes many of the most common problems that you might encounter when you try to add, move, or change a component inside your computer. Most of these problems have relatively easy solutions if you know where to look. Finding and fixing hardware problems requ...
7. Installing a New Hard Drive on Windows XP Professional
Hard drives are a special case. On a cost- per-bit basis, drives are cheap and getting cheaper all the time. When a drive fails, the cost of replacing the physical device is relatively small, but the data stored on the old drive is often irreplaceable. So you shouldn’t throw away an apparently broken drive until you have done everything possible to recover the data, and you shouldn’t do anything to the drive that might erase or damage any more data. When your boot drive (almost always the C: dri...
8. How to recover data from a corrupted hard drive using Windows XP Pro
Recovering Your Data Unless the physical platters inside the drive are severely damaged, it’s probably possible to recover the data from a bad drive. In extreme cases, you might need to send the drive to a very expensive recovery service that will take the drive apart in a clean room environment and replace the damaged parts, but it can be done. Before you spend that money, try the techniques in this section to read your files with special recovery software. The most important thing to ...
9. How to move a hard drive to a new computer under Windows XP
Moving a Hard Drive to a New Computer Moving an old drive to a new computer is often the best way to continue using the same data after you start using the new machine. However, it’s often not possible to use the old drive as the boot drive (the C: drive) on your new computer. You can’t just drop the old drive into the new box and use the Windows software that you installed on the old computer. Unless the old and new computers are exactly the same make and model or they use exactly the same m...