Build the perfect baby video

There's a reason they give out Oscars for editing. The process of separating the wheat from the chaff, the smiles from the spit-ups, can be nothing short of Herculean. Fortunately, there are tools and tips that can make the process easier:

Make it a music video
Fellini didn't make two-hour baby movies, and neither should you. Pick a meaningful song (Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" is always in style), then edit your movie to fit it. A music video is the ideal baby video, as it doesn't take an insane amount of time to create, it's short enough to keep viewers interested, and it overcomes the common problem of poor audio in your recordings (as you're replacing some or all of the audio with music).

Keep the scenes short
Whether you go the music-video route or not, don't linger on the same shot for more than 5 to 10 seconds. Obviously you can exercise some creative license here, especially if there's a lot of action happening, but just remember that long scenes tend to make for boring movies.

Avoid fancy transitions
Editing programs such as CyberLink PowerDirector 3.0 and Pinnacle Studio 9.0 offer dozens, even hundreds, of fancy transitions. Pretend they're not there and stick with basic fades and dissolves instead. If you absolutely must use the 3D barn-door pull-away, put it someplace logical, such as in between the opening credits and your first video shot. If it shows up in the middle of your movie, it's going to look really conspicuous--and out of place.

Consider automation software
If you don't have time to manually edit each and every frame of your movie, try a program that will do the work for you. Muvee AutoProducer 3.0 is one such time-saver; it automatically assembles movie clips, still photos, and MP3/WMA files into slick, polished music videos, all in about the time it takes to read this sentence. Pinnacle Studio 9.0 offers a similar kind of automation while giving you a full roster of editing and special-effects tools. Even Microsoft's free Windows Movie Maker 2.0 has an AutoMovie feature, though you can't output the finished product to DVD as you can with the other programs.

Don't forget to title
Throw in some descriptive text every now and then, such as "Baby's First Birthday." This is especially helpful if the audio quality isn't very good.

When you're done, render the video to your hard disk in the highest possible quality. The DVD you distribute will be nice, but you want a high-quality original to archive. Then, follow your video editor's or your DVD-burning software's instructions for laying out and burning the disc. Most of these software applications include templates for the disc's menu navigation.

Now ship the discs out to your friends and family and get started on those vacation videos that have been lying around gathering dust.