Do you want to edit video without purchasing a commercial program like Sony Vegas or Pinnacle? I do. Do you want to burn DVDs that’ll play on your standard DVD player but cringe at the thought of installing a massive, bloated program like Cyberlink PowerDVD on your PC? Yes, please.

OK. No problem. Download Virtualdub (read about it here) and the proper codecs and you’ll be in business for the video editing part. Visit the Virtualdub forums for answers to your burning questions (no pun intended) or post a question in the comments section and I can try answering it (not that I’ll actually be able to).

If you really want your video to be playable in the standard DVD player, please compress it using the xvid codec. Of course you could use DivX, which a lot of people do, but it’s not free like xvid (at least the pro version isn’t). There is a free version of the DivX codec with limited functionality, but who wants something that only half works? Not me.

Once you’ve edited your video you now want to burn it to a DVD. So, you try to do it, but quickly come to the conclusion that XP does not have built-in capabilities for burning DVDs. So, you’re too cheap to buy any commercial software, so where do you turn?

Easy. You turn to imgburn. It’s easy to use, user-friendly, simple, straightforward . . . oh, and did I mention that even my mom could use it (sorry, Mom). Download it, throw your blank DVD in, burn the files, and voila! if you encoded them correctly (with xvid or DivX), you’ll have a DVD that’ll play in most standard DVD players.

If for some reason you got an error when trying to burn your DVD, you might need to upgrade the firmware for your DVD burner. I had to. Mine’s a Lite-On DVD/RW SHW-160P6S. I found the firmware by googling the Lite-On website, navigating to the “downloads” section, then to the “firmware” section, then selecting my specific product. I downloaded it, installed it, re-booted, and all of a sudden I could burn DVDs.

So, to recap, you’ll need:

Virtualdub
xvid or DivX codecs
imgburn
some blank DVDs (I recommend Verbatim)
a possible firmware upgrade