If you use the Kodak Zi8, you will need some software to edit your movie.

I like Windows Movie Maker. It is free with Windows, is easy to use and has enough functionality for beginning video producers, like me.

However, the Zi8 makes Apple MOV files, which Movie Maker cannot read, so I tried Sony Vegas Pro 9, which has a 30 day free trial version (they are now up to Sony Vegas Pro 10).

There is a Sony Vegas HD version that sells for under $50, which is what I figure I might buy for my video editing needs when the free trial of the Pro edition runs out.

There are a few tricks that took me a long time to figure out that helped me out. Here they are.

Since I shot in WVGA mode, my video size was 848x480, which is not one of the choices anywhere. While you may shoot at 720 and 30 fps, if you follow along, you should be able to see how the settings work.

To avoid black bars on the top or sides of your video, you need to have the project size properties and the rendering size properties match.

Under File Properties, I set the Template to custom with a width of 848 and height 480. At 720 30 fps you can probably use HDV 720-30p. I think I left the rest of the settings at their defaults. I do not know what they mean, so it does not matter.

After editing your movie, to create your movie file, go to File, Render As. The settings that gave me the best results were.

Save as type: Windows Media Video V11 (*.wmv)

Template: 3 Mbps Video (*)

Uncheck at the bottom Stretch video to fill output frame size. If you check this, and your video is not big enough, you video will be distorted. If that is what you want, check it.

Click Custom on the right side, next to the Template line.

I left the Audio tab as is. On the Video tab:

Image size: (Keep Original Size)

Video smoothness: 80 (Sharpest)

Filled in the Index/Summary with title, copyright, year.

On the Project tab.

Video rendering quality: Good

This makes a WMV file.

These are not the specs Youtube recommends. Youtube recommends H.264 codec, which is what the original Zi8 format is, but I could not find good rendering settings. I kept getting huge files and really long rendering times.

With these settings, on a Fujitsu 2007 Laptop, running Windows Vista, with Intel Core Solo CPU, 1,2 ghz, 2 gb ram and 32-bit OS, it took about 25 minutes to render about a 3 minute movie with a resulting file size of 60 megabytes.

I was satisfied with these numbers and the quality of the video.

Some people suggest going into Task Manager and increasing the priority of the Sony Vegas task during rendering. For me, this did not help. My computer has a very clean installation, with nothing extra running on it and Sony Vegas was already using over 90% of the CPU. I used another PC while the laptop was rendering.

By Andrew Weitzen, Bronze Inc. Copyright (c) 2010.

Bronze is the publisher of several online Internet journals including: InternetHandholding.com, DomainNames.gs, DotNetNuke.bz, Programmer.bz, Software.vg, WebHosting.vg