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Back in the dim dark days of the desktop computer's evolution, desktop publishing was one of the "big things" that, it was claimed, helped drive sales of Macs and PCs alike.

Using software such as Pagemaker or Ventura Publisher, any man and his dog could (allegedly) turn out professional looking documents, newsletters, books -- or indeed, almost any kind of printed publication you could think of.

Suddenly those tatty club newsletters that were once typed up onto stencil material with a clunky manual typewriter and labouriously churned out of the Gestetner (one handle-turn at a time) were replaced with something altogether quite different.

No longer were amateur and wannabe publishers limited to a Courier 12 point typeface -- now they had the choice of hundreds of different fonts and sizes.

Unfortunately this often resulted in the most unbelievably bad documents which looked as if they were designed by troop of demented monkeys in a linotype factory.

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The power offered by this new software was very often abused beyond belief and it was not uncommon to count a dozen or more different typefaces in a single document. That was the newbie user's way of saying "look at me, I've got a computer and some DTP software!"

Even today there are far too many users of modern word-processing and document layup software who really don't understand the importance of subtlety when creating something that needs to have both impact and legibility.

But today's column isn't about desktop publishing, it's about the power that the latest video editing software offers to home-movie makers and wannabe movie directors/producers.

Now, both Windows and the Mac come with sweet little editing suits that can take the raw footage from your new camcorder and turn it into an audiovisual masterpiece -- just like that DTP software allowed people to create visual extravaganzas.

Alas, I fear we're also suffering from the same "look at me, I've got video editing software and it's got gazillions of features" show-off mentality as well.

Recently I've seen some of the "best efforts" of people using video editing software for the first time and it's the kind of stuff that makes you either wince with embarrassment or collapse into an epileptic fit due to the endless flashy transitions and effects.

It seems that many people believe that *all* those fancy effects are there to be used and, even though their video clip may only be a few minutes long, they're determined to use every last one of them in every bit of footage.

Now I'm no film-maker and I make no claims to know any more than anyone else with a camcorder and a bit of editing software -- but I think that everyone who gets the urge to do a bit of video-making ought to think back to just how bad those amateur DTP documents used to look.

Perhaps the best thing to do is watch a bit of TV -- but instead of getting lost in the plot of your favourite drama, watch carefully how the professionals use their editing software. You won't see any fancy transitions (no wipes, kaleidoscopes, barn-doors or such) and most of the time they keep things *really* simple. Even the titles use simple easily read fonts in plain white.

Perhaps those Aardvark readers who have done a bit of dabbling in home video editing might like to provide some pointers to suitable websites where we newbies can learn before we burn (to DVD) our work.

Chances are that there will be a lot of camcorders under Christmas trees this year and lots of fun holiday footage to be snapped -- let's help everyone do the job properly.

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