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Shooting footage with a video camera is easy. Assembling the random footage into something watchable can be a whole other matter. Working with professional-level video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro can cost a good deal and also means a very steep learning curve.

If you only want to do occasional editing for YouTube videos, there are some inexpensive applications available, such as Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate. But if you're really strapped for cash, there are a number of free tools out there that can do the job quite nicely.

For this roundup, I looked at the Windows versions of three free desktop programs (Avidemux, Wax and Windows Live Movie Maker) and at a Web-based editor (JayCut).

To test them, we shot footage of some friends at a golf driving range with a relatively low-end, inexpensive camcorder, the Canon ZR800. The ZR800 records in the MiniDV video file format, which typically produces a file of approximately 220MB for one minute of video with a resolution of 640-by-480 pixels.

We then edited these clips using the tools that each of the four applications supplied. Rather than trying to create four identical videos, We edited each according to what we perceived were the strengths of the product we were using.