FastTrak Movies on CD & DVD

FastTrak is keen to market Movies on CD & DVD along slightly different lines from the Adobe Premieres and Roxio VideoWaves of this world.

That's understandable, really, since the vast majority of home computer owners have no interest in becoming the next Orson Welles and even those who own a camcorder may well be put off by all the technical guff that goes along with editing on a PC.

Movies on CD & DVD, however, is aimed at quite a different stratum of the general public: those who have a fairly extensive collection of VHS recordings (feature films, TV series or perhaps home movies) that they would like to convert to a digital format.

There's a certain logic about the product. Cassettes degrade and are bulky, whereas CDs and (particularly) DVDs take up far less shelf space and should stand the test of time better than tapes.

In practice, however, Movies on CD & DVD is similar to many other video editing applications. It allows you to capture video clips from various sources, cut them together and then output them onto CD (if you have a CD-RW drive) or DVD (if you have any recordable DVD drive except DVD-Rom).

You'll also need some kind of capture device to get your footage onto your PC's hard disk in the first place, either a FireWire socket for digital video transfers, a TV tuner card or a dedicated analogue video capture card.

However, it's not as simple as it pretends to be and we were very disappointed by the accompanying manual. Considering that you can pick up a combined capture card/software package such as Pinnacle's DVClip for around £50, FastTrak's £30 asking price looks even less appealing.

Price: £30 (incl. VAT)
Contact: FastTrak 01923 495496
www.fasttrak.co.uk

Also consider: PINNACLE DVCLIP
A must for fledgling film makers. £50 *****.