and compressing it into an hour when you think everything that your kid did was the cutest thing in the world.
Assuming that all of your video has been successfully digitized, and is resting comfortably in your hard drives and all of your software is functioning properly, the first thing that has to be done, is that you watch all of the material and do what they call a rough cut. That means you begin the process of selecting the shots that you want to include in your finished production.
What I suggest doing is setting up bins and clip files. For example if your video is covering multiple years, organize your bins by the year, season or event. Then as you’re going through all of your home movies, clip out the best birthday shots, Halloween shots, etc… and collect them into these bins. Same goes for other events like beach vacations,