Thanks for responding so quick. Can you explain why it got so huge when I am only using 3g of actual video clips. I tried to render it and it said that I didn't have enough room on my hard drive. I don't. I did the same video in Showbiz that came iwth my burner and it was only 3.7 g when I was all done. I didn't even have enough room to render the whole thing not to mention that it took forever to attempt to render

Jeanne,

First of all I want to say that you are ahead of most people if you only bought this program last night. You must be a fast learner. I can email you but that would leave out some of the expert advice available here from others.

Anyone have a simple solution?

According to my calculations 80 minutes of video in .avi should be about 17.4 gb, so 18gb sounds right.

At high quality, a DVD will only hold one hour of video. Ninety minutes of video will fit on a DVD at a lower quality setting.

The projects I work on are never longer than twenty minutes. The average attention span is about fifteen minutes.

If I have one hour of video, I try to take the important and interesting parts and cut it down to less than twenty minutes. You can keep your original tapes if you want to see the entire thing. Friends and family will watch my videos because they know they are short and interesting. I also like to mix in photographs using pan and zoom.

Movie Studio is non-destructive, which means that your original video stays the same. MS only refers to the sections you want it to use. That means if you captured 80 minutes of video and only use fifteen minutes in your movie, you still have 80 minutes of video on your hard drive. Once you render, you can delete the 80 minutes if you want, and just save the rendered movie.

Most serious video editors have huge and fast hard drives. I have two – 200 gb drives with 8 meg buffers on each spinning at 7200 rpm. Storage is not an issue. I am working on three different projects at once and still have plenty of room.

Is it possible to add an external hard drive? Does your laptop have firewire? Do you have a second computer in the house?

Okay.. I understand what your saying. The only problem is this is a show my daughter was in and i want to perserve the whole thing. I was able to do this with showbiz so I will keep that one. I also now understand the bit about size. I don't think my laptop has a fire wire. Is it possible to add one to a lap top? I also have another computer in the house but I don't know if it has one either. I want to buy another computer asap as this inst' going to be a fly by night hobby. I LOVE IT and plan to do much more. What would you suggest in the way of specs for a new desktop model. i want to make sure I don't out grow it soon.

Now I understand while my disk space got eaten up so quickly. Makes tons of sense. Thanks for clearing that up.
Now, for thequestions.. how do I change the settings for rending to make it a lower quality. That way I could just add the whole show on one dvd and the special bits at a higher quality for those folks who just want to see little Janie sing her part. :)

I would love to add a bigger drive this laptop any suggestions if I don't have a fire wire???

Your a doll for helping me out and thanks for the thumbs up on the learning curve. and the encouragment taht I am doing okay with this. I thought I was just slow :) Being a teacher makes me critical of my own learning and I was just stumped. Also are there any books on this type of thing so I can increase my knowledge? I know I learn better by doing so having someone who can put up with the ignorance of the whole idea makes it easier for me to learn. I hope to pass on the help someday.

Again a huge thank you for your patience and willingness to help.
Jeanne

You can get a firewire & USB 2.0 adaptor card for your laptop. It will slide into your PCMCIA (PC Card) slot in the side of your laptop. Do a search on Ebay for one, should run you around $20.

Once you have the adaptor you can get a USB 2.0 external hard drive and then use that for storage of video.

Jivedaddy