Five Really Boring Things to Do First to Make Your Video Editing Easier!
1. Run any Spyware Removal Programs first. Spyware can really slow down your hard drive and cause crashes. This happens often enough during editing anyway!
2. Check your free space on your hard drive. You should have at least 25% of your hard drive space free - and 35% is much better. To find this locate "my computer" and open it. Then right click with your mouse on your C drive icon and select "properties" 
You should then see a screen like the one below telling you how much free space you have. If you don't have enough, then clean up and remove old files or move files to an external hard drive. If you are doing very much video editing then you will need an additional hard drive.
3. Scan Disk - If Your Computer has crashed very often then run "Scan Disk" also called error checking. Click on the Tools Tab in My Computer (After Right Clicking and selecting properties.) Select the Error Checking Option. You should get a dialog box like the one below. Check both options and click start.
You should now get a dialog box like the one below asking if you want to schedule this the next time you restart the computer. Click Yes. Then restart your computer and scandisk will run. This could take a long time. So you might want to start it when you are going to bed or before lunch.
4. Defrag Your Hard Drive- Your files and pieces of files get scattered all over your computer. If you are doing al lot of video editing your hard drive becomes much more fragmented. Stay in "my computer" (computer for Vista users) and click on tools. Select "Deframent Now" It will first analyze and tell you if you need to defrag. If you don't need to do so - you may need to run this after doing video editing. This can also seem like an eternity before it finishes.
5. Put All your files in the same folder. If your computer has to go to multiple locations it takes longer. Also if you need to go do additional editing later - you may have moved a file and your editing program can no longer find it. This won't happen if you keep all your files in the same folder. I usually make a copy of any files I use and move the copies to my editing folder.
Not very exciting stuff but it sure makes it a lot easier on your head - so you don't keep banging it against a wall when things mess up! I'm thinking of padding the walls of my room!
+1. Disconnect from the Internet and then turn off your Anti-Virus Software & Spyware as this often will conflict with video editing programs. (Thank you A. Grey at VidListing.com for this suggestion)
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