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Whether you’re a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or run an online business, you can no longer ignore the importance of Internet videos. Thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube and other video-sharing sites daily. YouTube gets millions of hits daily, and is the second most popular online search engine.

Fri You can use video to attract visitors to your blog, build traffic and increase sales of your products and services. You can upload the video descriptions and reviews of your products to stand out from your competition and increase online sales. If you want to develop a competitive advantage, you must learn to make your own videos.

Creating your own videos have now become very simple. You can create professional videos even if you have no technical expertise or expensive equipment. The only hardware you need is your computer, a webcam and a microphone. You do not need any expensive software either. You can record and edit your videos with Windows Movie Maker, which comes free with Windows XP and later versions. Movie Maker is so simple to use that anyone with basic computer knowledge can quickly learn to use it to create their own videos.

If you play your first video, follow the 12 steps below to record the first video.

A. Connect Web camera to the USB port on your computer, turn it on and make sure it works properly. (Make sure you have installed the webcam software first.)

2 Next, connect the microphone to another USB port on your computer.

Three. Click Start , click All Programs , and then click Windows Movie Maker to open it (Figure 1).

4 Click Capture from video unit option, which will open Video Capture Wizard . (“Capture from video device” means to record audio, video or still images as digital data in a data file.)

5 Choose your web camera and microphone, and then microphone Audio Input Source box.

After adjusting the volume on the microphone, move the Input level slider .

(If the sound of the video is not high enough, you can raise the input level and if it is too high, you can set it to a lower level.)

Finally, click on the Configure button, which takes you to Configure Video Capture Device dialog box.

6 Click Video Settings button, which will display Properties dialog box.

Change Output Size using the drop-down menu to 640 x 480 (pixels).

Then put Frame Rate to 30.00 (frames per second), which is the highest possible setting.

Click on and OK to close the Properties dialog box.

Finally, click on Close, close Set Video Capture Device dialog box and return to Video Capture Wizard window.

7 Click Next button.

In this window, type a file name and then choose a location for your video using the Browse button. (For example, you can enter Video1 to save the file nameand My Videos .)

Click on Next button.

8 In this window you can change the settings for video, which will determine the quality and size of the video file.

Select Other Settings and in the drop-down menu, select Video for LAN (1, 0 Mbps) , which is preferable if you want to upload video to YouTube.

When you do this, the setting details of the video will be summarized as follows:

type : Windows Media Video (WMV)

Bit Rate : 1.0 Mbps

(A bit higher rate results in higher quality video with smoother motion.

However, when the bit rate increases, so does the video file size.)

Display size : 640 x 480 pixels

(The first number indicates the width of the video, and the other’s height.)

frames per second : 30

(A higher figures or images per second makes the movement of objects or people in the video appear smoother.)

Video Size: Each minute of video with this setting will consume 7 MB

(Estimated amount disk space used by each minute of video.)

9 Click Next button, which opens Capture Video window, where you can start recording video.

This window has Start Capture and Stop Capture button.

To the right of these buttons, it’s a Preview screen where you can watch video while you record it.

At the bottom of this window, there are three more options.

a. Create clips when wizard finishes (choose this option)

This option specifies whether the captured video is divided into clips when it is stored and imported into Windows Movie Maker. Create separate clips captured video into manageable sizes. If you do not select this option, the video as one large clip when you have finished capturing.

b. Mute speakers (do not select this option)

This option specifies that you want to mute the speakers connected to your sound card on your computer.

c. Capture deadline (select this option and set a time limit)

If this box is checked, capturing stops automatically at the specified time limit. Time is shown in hours: minutes (h: mm). So, if you want to set a maximum time limit of five minutes, enter 0:05 in the box.

10 Click the Start Capture button.

This is when you actually start recording your first video.

When you are finished, click Stop Capture button stop recording.

The Capture Video window provides details about the length of the video, the video file and the estimated disk space on your computer hard disk during the recording.

11 Finally, click Finish button, which takes you to a new window.

12 Here you will see the video file is imported into a collection area, where you can edit it later. Windows Movie Maker also stores the video file in the location you specified earlier ( Video1.wmv My Videos ).

Click on this file and make sure it plays correctly .

Congratulations, you’ve played your first video! Do not worry if it is not prefect. You can take it up again and again with the same procedure until you are satisfied. Alternatively, you can remove these errors later when you edit the video in Movie Maker. The more you practice, the easier it will be. When you are satisfied with the quality of your video, you can upload it to YouTube and add it to your blog or website, if you wish.

Additional notes:

If your computer has Windows Vista instead of Windows XP, you will discover that Capture from video device option is missing in Windows Movie Maker program. Do not worry, you can download a free application called AMCap (amcap.en.softonic.com) and use it to record video. Once you’ve recorded it, you can edit video in Windows Movie Maker.

Another option for capturing video, is to use webcam software.

A third alternative is to use Avidemux ( avidemux.sourceforge.net), a free open-source program that works with Windows and on Linux and Macintosh computers.