With the imminent arrival of a new baby, your life will become a whirlwind. If you're planning to capture the whole experience on video, plan carefully and you'll have a priceless record of those fleeting early days to savour long after interrupted sleep and mashed bananas fade from memory.

1. Plan ahead
2. What you'll need
3. Choose your shots
4. Capture the moments
5. Edit your footage
6. Render, view and distribute

Build the perfect baby video

Step 1: Plan ahead
Cot? Check. Nappies? Check. Digital camcorder with tripod, spare battery, plenty of storage media and video-editing software? Better double-check. Whether you're a first-time parent or rounding out your family cricket team, it's almost unthinkable these days to let the experience go undocumented.

To build the perfect baby video, you'll need to do a bit of advance planning. That's because your memory is about to take a backseat to all things baby, a development that could lead to trouble down the road. In other words, when you sit down to edit your video, you don't want to discover that you forgot to get a shot of Grandma with the baby. Trust us, there aren't enough Hallmark cards on the planet to undo that mistake.

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Sam Hinshelwood
09/08/2005 04:41 PM

Thanks for the tip... What a great article for someone who has just had a baby (like me), is looking to buy a camcorder (like me), is an avid amateur photographer (like me) who is keen to put their skills to test making movies (again, like me). Great advice, apparently well researched, and not just from a tech point of view, with all the shooting, editing, preparation advice. I'm off to check out your Camcorder reviews, and video editing software reviews, and dvd burner reviews.

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