Now that you're back from holiday, with all the fun and games captured on your video camera, it's only natural that you'll want to show it to friends and family.

However, they'll probably get a tad bored if they had to sit through hours of cinematic nose-picking before getting to the good bits, so some editing will be a good idea.

But, do you know how?

Fortunately, Windows comes preloaded with free movie editing software, which is fairly powerful. You'll be able to find better software on the internet — some for a price, some not — but Windows Movie Maker is a good place to start. It will teach you the basics of working with timelines, layers and stitching multiple video and audio files together.

I will endeavour to explain how to edit a video-clip, but please keep in mind that this will be video-editing in its most basic form and that you'll have to play around in Windows Movie Maker before you'll become suitably adept at chopping and changing. The built-in help files in Windows Movie Maker will also come very handy.

Still, if you follow the instructions in this article, you'll begin to get an idea of how it all works.

So, in Windows XP, go to "Start" — "All Programs" and click on "Windows Movie Maker" (it's at the bottom of the list of folders among the icons).

When the program opens, you'll see the page is divided into four sections: On the top left you have some task options, in the top middle you have an area where you'll "store" all the video and audio files that you're going to use, on the top right you have a video player that will show you a preview of what your video will currently look like (click on "play" at any time to see the preview), and at the bottom you have the timeline and layers.

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