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Step 1
Look in the box. It’s easy to forget about all the bundled extras in the excitement of opening your brand-new camera. There may be bundled software or guides for editing.
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Step 2
Check the manual. Flip through the booklet or check out the table of contents. Even if you’ve owned your camera for years, there may be features you didn’t know about.
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Step 3
Shoot some raw video. Nothing special, just get some footage that you can play around with.
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Step 4
Explore the menus. Once you have some video to work with, start looking through the menus on your camcorder. Explore sub-menus as well and try using a feature even if you don’t know what it does. Try different modes on the selector, too.
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Step 5
Look for some common features. Almost all cameras have the TIME STAMP feature and the ability to insert titles. You can use these to organize your clips for later or insert humorous text into the video.
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Step 6
Try some digital effects. Night vision and infrared are intended for dark scenes, but they might provide cool effects in other situations. Some camcorders have many digital effects that will change the picture in real time. Scroll through some while filming to see how they look.
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Step 7
Work with hard disk drive. This type of format is easiest to edit on the fly. Unlike a tape, the media is stored digitally like information on your PC. This means you can delete, rearrange and edit your footage directly on the camcorder.
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Step 8
Transfer your video to a PC. This can usually be done through a simple firewire or USB connection using your bundled software. Once your footage is on a PC, the editing possibilities are endless.
