Capable, Low-Cost Editors

It's truly remarkable how far you can get with free video editors, like Windows Movie Maker, VideoSpin, and iMovie, but you may find at some point that these editors simply won't produce a video that matches your vision.  For example, if you find yourself drooling over High Definition video, there is no free editor on Windows that will edit it.  (It seems that iMovie '08 can edit HD on a Mac, but some users are disappointed in this version for other reasons.)  Other reasons you might want to step up:

• multiple video tracks for doing PIP, compositing, green screen effects, etc.
• multiple audio tracks and better audio editing capability
• more/better video effects, transitions, and titles
• ability to author DVD's with menus
• etc.

If you're one of those people, you should know that there are some very capable editors that are quite inexpensive, and we'll be discussing and demonstrating some of them in this section. For openers, Windows users might want to look at this chart, which is a pretty detailed comparison of features and functionality for ten low-cost editors.