Hours of fun. And frustration. Product/Link: VideoWave Movie Creator™ Synopsis: Turns raw video and sound into a movie. Requirements: Win98SE/Me/2000/XP, 128MB RAM, minimum Pentium® III 500MHz CPU (1.6MHz for MPEG-2 capture from DV), 600MHz hard drive space, 1024x768 monitor resolution, CD or DVD drive. TV tuner and/or video capture card recommended. Price: USD49.95. Rating: Simple but flexible. Comment: You can take video and/or audio from a TV, cable, DVD, CD, camcorder (digital or analog), hard disk, almost any source, and turn it into your own Emmy nominated production. The challenge doesn't come in gathering the elements, it's in the editing. Move Creator makes ample use of wizards, mouseovers and help menus to lead you through the process, yet it's sophisticated enough for more advanced users to be more creative. Move Creator has a start page with five clickable icons, though some overlap. Easy Capture downloads from TVs, camcorders, VCRs, USB Web cams. Once you're hooked up, select the source then push "Easy Capture" to begin recording. CineMagic puts videos with audio. Move Creator supports .avi, MPEG-1 & 2, .wmv, and writes RealVideo. Sounds supported: .MP3, .wav., .wma, .cda converted to .wav. It won't accept audio tracks longer than the video. Story Builder makes the movie from the parts. It's here you add transitions (fades, wipes, etc.), titles of various styles, and audio. Chose a template, select an introduction, create a title, select an ending, create an end title. Just like the real thing. StoryLine Editor lets you edit an existing movie, or create one from scratch. It's easy to take a little from this video, a little from that, then combine them. Special effects are available as are overlays. Finally, VideoCD/DVD Maker enables you to burn your best works. Shorter ones on CDs and full length movies on DVDs. If you have more than one work, you can set the order in which they appear. A nice feature of Movie Creator is you can chose the quality of your video depending on its end use. If it's to go on the Web through a dial-up connection you don't want the highest quality because the file size would be overwhelming. For DVDs you can go with your best shot. The sample shown here (shot with an inexpensive PC camera), saved in .wmv format for Windows Media Player, is only about 30", shows a few special effects, has some music, but is a whopping 400KB and looks like hell. Too much was stuffed into it. At 1MB it appears much better, but not everyone has a high speed connection, or the patience to download it. If you do, click here. As easy as it is to bring all the elements together, unless you spend hours editing even the simplest production you'll get garbage out. Whether it's a 30" commercial or a three-hour feature, you should always start with a storyboard (a frame by frame plan) including dialog, titles, effects, sounds, timing. Oh, yes, a good story idea, even poorly executed, is the most important ingredient. Conclusion: Movie Creator is like a power tool. It lets you more easily turn out something to be proud of, or it turns out lots of sawdust real fast.