An evening sunset at the beach, a peacock in full glory, a child's birthday party with bouncing balloons and high noise levels-each everyday scene can be captured on video. But what do you do when the Digital Video (DV) tape or the camcorder's hard disk is full? Which application should you use for video editing? Which program can output in all formats, from DVD to Blu-ray? There are so many choices that it's nearly impossible to narrow down a sensible list, because all available packages cost roughly the same, at around Rs 6,800 (approx.) on average, and offer almost the same features. They accept rough video from camcorders, DVDS: or the Internet, irrespective of whether the camcorders work with DV tape, hard disk or memory card. it was once a specialty of CyberLink's Power Director to upload video directly from the software to YouTube, but today, most do this with just a few mouse clicks.

However, major differences are revealed in detailed testing of the six programs-for instance, during the installation. Adobe, Magix and. Pinnacle confuse amateur filmmakers with expensive registration procedures; they must request activation codes for MPEG4 or Dolby 5.1 via the internet and manually enter these in the program.