While most of us feel comfortable shooting with a camcorder, fear of actually editing the video is so rampant that it deserves an official medical designation, like timeline-aphobia or transitionitis. In years past, when working with analog formats (for example, 8-mm, Hi8, and VHS-C), underpowered computers, and minimal hard disk space, this apprehension was probably justified.

Today, though, if you own a DV camcorder and late-model Windows XP computer, you'll find video editing surprisingly accessible. With the holiday season looming (and perhaps summer videos waiting to be edited), there's never been a better time to take the plunge. So take a deep breath, visualize success, and follow along with our introduction to video editing.

We'll be working with a home video of a birthday party highlighted by a visit from a clown. While the edits are specific to this project, the techniques should work for most home videos.

We're going to demonstrate the techniques using Microsoft's Movie Maker 2.1 for Windows XP because it's freely available to all Windows XP users. Other programs for editing digital video that have higher-end features than Movie Maker 2.1 are available. For our review of two of the best consumer products, Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio Pro 9, see "Video-Editing Power for Non-Pros". For newcomers, though, Movie Maker is a good place to start.

This latest version of Movie Maker is available only as a component of Windows XP Service Pack 2; if you've downloaded SP2, you should have Movie Maker 2.1. Go to your Start menu and select All Programs, then Accessories and Enter- tainment. You can learn more about Version 2.1 and how to start the SP2 download process at www.microsoft.com/moviemaker .

Figure 1 shows the Movie Maker interface. On the top left is the Tasks pane, where you'll initiate most production tasks. In the top middle is the Collections pane, which houses captured and imported content as well as Movie Maker's collections of transitions and special effects. You'll preview your movie in the Monitor, which is on the top right.

On the bottom is the Storyboard, where you'll drag and sequence the clips in your project. As we'll see below, this window converts to a Timeline used to finalize your videos.