If you have a digital camcorder and a computer, you can now transfer your video to your computer, where you can edit it in a more professional manner, burn it to a DVD or CD-ROM and then send it off to family and friends.

Giving your video a proper edit, cutting out the boring stuff, the flubs, the shaky camera, the horrible sound, will help your audience escape from the eye-glazing numbness that is the norm for most home videos.

The basic steps are to capture the video on your computer, edit the video, create the DVD layout and then burn the DVD. As discussed in last week?s column you will need a computer with at least one FireWire port. If you have an analogue camera, you will need extra equipment to make the conversion to digital.

Your computer will also have to have at least Windows 98 (higher is preferable), lots of RAM and a major amount of hard disk space. You might have to consider investing in an external hard drive of at least 60 gigabytes for additional space. You will need about one gigabyte of disk space for every four minutes of footage in DV AVI, the format most camcorders use.

You will need software to transfer your video.

There?s no shortage of programs to choose from and many have test versions for you to try out before buying. Windows XP comes bundled with Windows Movie Maker. If you have a Mac, you are lucky. Apple has a similar package called iLife, which contains iMovie, the company?s video editing package. ILive comes bundled with each DV-ready Mac or costs about $50 online. For professional editing, you can try Final Cut Pro, also available from Apple.

If you have invested in a DVD burner you may already have the necessary video transfer, editing and burning software. Check first.

My JackRabbit DVD burner came with Nero burning software, which gets good ratings from the computer magazines. Nero is actually a suite of video and picture editing and burning software. It costs $60 if you download it online at www.nero.com.

Ulead?s VideoStudio is another video editing suite. The newest version won Computer Shoppers? award this year as the ?Best Consumer Video-Editing Software?. Adobe, Pinnacle, Avid and Dazzle, among others, also produce video editing software.

If you don?t want to shell out money try one of the free video editing packages available for download on the Internet. These are ABC VideoRoll 2.5.70 by Advanced Technology Partners (www.thesoftwaredirectory.8m.com), VirtualDub (www.virtualdub.org) and Zwei-Stein (www.thugsatbay.com).

Now, it is time to transfer your video. Usually all you have to do is hook your camcorder up to your FireWire port, turn it on, start up your software and start the video transfer process.

Unless you have a really high-powered computer, I recommend transferring the video in batches of about five minutes each. That way you can edit these bite-sized chunks without overly slowing down or crashing your computer. Your software will later allow you to put the pieces together seamlessly.

One tip. Transfer your video in the DV AVI format. Once you have edited it, you can then convert it to an MPEG-2 file to meet with the DVD video specification when burning to a DVD disc. You can also encode the movie to MPEG-1 if you want to transfer it to a low capacity CD-Rom. Converting the video to MPEG-1 or 2 simply compresses the file so it can be burned on to a disc. Your viewers will then be able to view the video with Real Player or Windows Media Player.

Most video software will also automatically divide your video into scenes, making it easer to cut and move them around in your finished project. The software will not affect your original video. Your edited video will appear as a ?project?, which you can then convert to one MPEG2 file. You will also be able to dub in music to go with your video. You will then use your DVD or CD-Rom burning software to create a disc on your DVD burner/player containing your finished movie. A DVD+R disc of 4.7 gigabytes will hold about 20 minutes or less of raw video. Using a compressed format such as MPEG2 a typical DVD can hold almost two hours of video.

For articles on the process and the technical aspects of creating video try www.computerlearning.org, www.computershopper.co.uk, www.videohelp.com and www.camcorderinfo.com.

As a follow up to last week article I got a query from a reader about a problem in transferring video: ?I have a Panasonic VDR-M30 DVD Palmcorder. It has a USB connection to the computer. I have a one-year-old Dell computer that has a FireWire connection. I also have Pinnacle Studio Version 9 software. My problem is that it seems Pinnacle and several other video capture software programs will not recognize my Palmcorder because it is not connected through the FireWire connection. I can?t seem to find a cable/connector that will connect the USB outlet on my Palmcorder to the PC FireWire inlet. I also can?t find a converter (is there such a thing). Any suggestions??

Well the problem is that VDR-M30 does not have a FireWire connection. VDR-M30 uses a mini DVD disc instead of tape format to record videos. The camcorder acts as both a camcorder and a DVD burner.

?What the hell were they thinking?? said one frustrated user at an online forum.

?I can record to a DVD-R and pop it into my computer, but you can?t record in XTRA fine mode on DVD-R and who has a DVD-RAM drive? Great camera with this fundamental flaw.?

One solution is to try and use One solution is to try and use the software that came with the VDR-M30 to burn your video to your hard drive instead of a DVD disc (as it wants to do). Then use your other software to edit and burn the video.

As far as I know there is no hardware that will allow a FireWire port to be connected to a USB connecting wire.

You can also try the Dazzle Multimedia package (www.pinnaclesys.com) which connects to a Hi-Speed USB port and which claims to be able to transfer videos onto your computer from any camcorder, VCR or DVD player.

Your best bet is to contact Panasonic support on the Internet, as I?m sure others have having the same frustrating problem. The problem serves as an example to us all: do the research before you buy so that you discover the flaws before you have to search for work-around solutions.