If you are going to make home movies from your camcorder footage, you need more than Windows Movie Maker or the free video editors that come with some camcorders. That is especially true if you plan to put those movies on DVD.

For under $100, you can buy excellent video editors with DVD designers from a variety of companies like Pinnacle, Ulead, Adobe and Roxio (Sonic Solutions). They all have the features you need and their own individual style.

My favorite by far is Sony's Vegas Movie Studio. It is priced at $70 ($55 if downloaded); a free trial download is available at the site. The Platinum edition ups the price by $30 and adds a variety of features including basic color correction and a yet another $30 gets you the Pro Pack edition that includes a copy of Sound Forge Audio Studio.

The Sony Software products are from its Sony Creative Software subsidiary in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison is the home of Sonic Foundry, which sold its Desktop Software Division to Sony in 2003. Sony notwithstanding, these products are all made in America!

If you are looking for the heavy duty version, check out Vegas Pro (formerly Vegas+DVD). It's the bargain-priced professional video editor at $600 ($550 download) but don't let the price fool you. It competes directly and well with much more expensive products like Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro.

The one weak product in Sony's superb lineup of media tools is Cinescore. Because all the Vegas video editors support Cinescore, it would seem the logical tool to buy for automated soundtrack creation. Sony's weakness is lies in its theme packs of music, which are quite limited and too expensive. The music is heavily oriented towards urban and electronic genres with almost no acoustic, jazz, country or easy-listening material.

That's why I chose SmartSound instead. The new version of Sonicfire is terrific and, although SmartSound music is also heavily biased towards urban and electronic, the company has been adding more variety to its substantial music library. SmartSound is also more sophisticated from a sales point of view, allowing purchases of both theme packs and individual tracks directly from within the program for instant download and use.