a Firewire cable, and software commands the camcorder. I suggest using the "Capture Tape" button rather than the "Capture Video" button, as it automatically rewinds the tape before capturing and labeling each video clip. It stores the video files in your "My Document" folder by default, and also makes a shortcut in the Vegas Project Media tab within the Vegas software. When the capture is done, press the square "stop" button on the screen, and you have your video clips ready for editing.

     There are six tracks by default arranged under a timeline ruler, which runs from left to right: (a) text, (b) video overlay, (c) main video, (d) main audio, (e) music and (f) sound effects. All you do is drag the files from the Project Media window to the track main video track. Or, you can select a file from another folder by using the "Explorer" tab within Vegas to locate the folder and file you want. You can drag the tracks around, positioning them to the left or right, and you're free to move the video to the video overlay or text track. You can pan the audio left or right, and adjust the master audio level up or down on each track.

     You can easily select sections of the clips, then press the delete key to delete that portion from the final product. Deleting a section does not affect the original video clip in your "My Documents" folder.
 
     There's a preview window in the lower right corner, where you can easily watch how your edited product is coming along. While watching the preview, you can click anywhere on the timeline and press the triangle "play" button, and your preview instantly jumps to that part of the video. Editing and previewing is very quick and convenient.

     The neatest feature is the ease of fading in and out. For fading in, just click and hold on the upper left hand corner of the video (or audio) clip. Wait a moment for the arrow cursor to change to the "fade" cursor, then gently drag it to the right. You'll see a blue curve appear over the video segment, representing the amount of fade in time you want. Drag it to the desired amount (say one second), and let go. That's it! You now have one second of fade-in. If you right click on that portion, it brings up a menu where you can select the types of fade-in -- whether you want a linear fade, or more like an S-curve fade that's fast or slow. To make it fade out, do the same on the upper right hand corner of the segment.

     If you drag the video clip and overlap the ends of two segments - one that has a fade out, followed by one that has a fade in - you get a nice one second dissolve from clip 1 to clip 2. By controlling the amount of overlap and the amount of fade, you have easy and fabulous control of the transitions.
     The multiple video tracks and overlays are simple but powerful features.

     There is a "Text" feature where you can easily type in a text title slide like you would for a Powerpoint presentation. Slide the text box between the clips to give the clips a title.
     If you put a video clip on the "Video Overlay" track, it displaces the main video - so you can use this track to overlay a shorter, close-up video into the main video while preserving the main timeline and audio. I used this feature for a birthday party video to overlay a close-up shot of dad and baby daughter onto the main party video clip of music, guests and laughter. You can insert video clips, text titles or JPEG files.

     The PCR-109 has an ability while the video is being taken to snap a screen shot frame onto Memory Stick. So, when I tell the group to "smile on the count of three, 1, 2, 3" and snap that choice pose, I can position that .JPEG file on the video overlay track and have that pose overlay linger on the screen while the rest of the audio track continues. There's controls on the tracks that you can set the video intensity to 100% or something less that you can make it look like a ghost or dream if that's what you want. You can apply the fade-in/fade-out to the text and video overlays as well. These are really powerful techniques, and it's done very simply and easily.
There's an "insert marker" feature where you can mark and title chapters within the video before you render it. The chapter titles are automatically made available to the DVD Architect program. There is a button in the DVD Architect program that will automatically generate a series of menu pages with thumbnails and chapter titles.

     You can render the video into a number of formats, including MPEG2 (for DVDs). One needs lots of CPU speed to render the videos. I'm running it on a Pentium D 830, 3.0 Ghz Dual Core system with 1 GB of RAM and a 4x DVD burner. I find I can render a 60 minute video into MPEG2 in about 50 minutes. Once I define the layout of the DVD, it can prepare the DVD image and burn that 60 minute video onto a blank DVD about 25 minutes. I'm keeping this PC clean of extraneous software to ensure Vegas runs well without software conflicts.
     The DVD Architect is less intuitive. I had difficulty making a DVD menu button for the finished movie. By default, it uses the first frame of the video as the image for the button. I can drag and drop the MPEG file onto the layout of the DVD menu, (which creates the active button on the menu of the DVD). I finally discovered that if I then dragged and dropped overlay a .JPEG image file captured from the video (you do that in the preview window of the video editor program) over that button, I can change the appearance of that button to be a scene from the video that I really wanted. The menu feature is called "insert object". If I click on that button (using the DVD remote control) on the fnished DVD, it plays that video file.

     I previously mentioned the Architect feature "insert scene selection menu", which automagically picks up the markers in the rendered MPEG video, pulls out the chapter titles, makes the thumbnails, places the titles below the thumbnails, and sets up the navigation. It's smart enough to make multiple menu pages, if needed. All at the click of one button. Very nice.

     I can see that I can set the start point for the video to be something other than the menu on the DVD, and even put a video introduction leader to the DVD before displaying the main menu -- but I haven't done that yet.
     The Architect program is smart enough to track changes and only reprepare the items you've changed since you created the last DVD. So, if you want to replace one video segment with a newer version, it'll only prepare the DVD changes for that one video segment.
    

     That's all you really need to know to get started. Within a few hours, I've formatted several DVDs of home videos and really, really enjoy crafting it to come out the way I want it. It's way better than some of the freebie software that comes with Windows or DVD burners. This video editor comes with 1,001 sound effects, which I've yet to fully explore. I've only scratched the surface with the basic features and I know there's way more sophistication in the menus and FX features. Have done it the hard way in the past with reel-to-reel video recorders, this is awesome and pure heaven!

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