Community weekly poll: What do you do with your home videos after filming?

Pinnacle Studio 9.3 & Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5

Since the new addition to our family 3 years ago, we went out and bought a Sony Digital 8 DCR-TRV250, a Sony CyberShot DSC-F828 8 Meg Pixel Camera and a 3.2 Ghz PC with 2GB memory and (2) 300GB HD's . As new parents we started taking lots of pictures and as time goes by we have slowed considerabley. However with all the taping and photos and her parents in one state and mine in another, we needed to put this stuff on DVD's and send them a set as well. We tried several editing softwares that were cheap to purchase, but was also cheap quality (You get what you pay for).
We finally bought Pinnacle Studio 8 (www.pinnaclesys.com) with a VIVO card (Video In & Video Out) which later we upgraded to Studio 9. This software has been the easiest to use and makes very excellent quality DVD's. We can easily add and mix photos and video recordings, as well as add background music from either MP3's, WAV's or from the SmartSound library that is included with the software. Pinnacle Studio is absolutely our choice for editing when we are short of time since it is quick and easy to use.
I am the sort of person who loves to experiment with everything, so I also tried other more expensive software including the Adobe CS2 Suite & Premiere Pro. I love challenges and their software is just that, but if ever you want a software with all the bells and whistles, they have it! Their Photoshop CS2 is the absolute best for editing your photos. Touch-ups to get rid of of a pimple or sightless mole is easy and flawless with the ''Spot Healing brush tool''. Adobe has demos at their web site (www.adobe.com) you should go check them out. Their software is not cheap, it's not all that easy to use (at first), but you do get the very best professional quality available photos (even from scans) and videos from your equipment. Photo prints outs after touch ups in Photoshop are as beautiful as if a professional had taken them with an expensive camera.
If you are going to make family photos you may want to consider to make appoinments on your calendar as a ''TO-DO item''. Otherwise you will end up throwing your tapes or discs on a shelf and not getting things done. Then their is a chance you may not get to see that stuff ever again, esp. if you have one of those old dinosaurs Beta or VCR tape formats. Children grow fast and it is a shame to have pictures of them crawling and learning to walk and none of them during the other significant moments that could bring a laugh or tears to your eyes later.