YouTube has become an indispensable marketing vehicle for businesses of every size. That means to keep your enterprise in front of potential customers, making videos is a necessity. Shooting video is straightforward, but the editing part takes practice, time and the right tools.

That’s where the choice of software is crucial. My colleague Rob Kay and I approached this subject from the perspective of a small business interested in DIY video production. There’s a balance among ease of use, price and capability to consider.

The best way for a neophyte to start learning editing is by experimenting with Movie Maker from Windows or iMovie, if you’re using a Mac. Both are free and are packaged with their respective operating systems. Once you’ve dipped your toes in the water and feel ready to move on, you’ll need to buy something with more firepower.

We did a lot of research to determine which product to review and ended up choosing Sony’s Vegas 13.

Why?

We scoured the forums and talked to industry friends, and this software was consistently recommended. The Vegas program is tilted more toward professionals. At a price of $600 it’s not cheap, but you’ll have something that will provide every conceivable video (and audio) tool that you could ever want. You could even make a full-length Hollywood feature with this software!

Note that there is a much less expensive ($80) program called Movie Studio Platinum which has a number of the cool features of the higher-priced Vegas platform. (Corel Video Studio Pro X7 at $67 is also a good option on the entry level.)

So what did we like best about Sony Vegas?

For starters it’s intuitive. The basics (for example, trimming video or audio or adding additional media to your project such as photos or music) is a snap. Likewise, adding text is also easy. Eventually you can automate some tasks such as text formatting to expedite matters.

The good thing is that Vegas has an "embedded" interactive tutorial system and also provides a number of videos to learn this stuff. To use the interactive mode, just click on the icon with the index finger pointed upward and you’re in business. Sony also provides a number of videos, and you can always go on YouTube. Of course, the problem with that is there are a lot of mediocre tutorials that you’ll have to wade through to find the good material.

One way around that is to spend some money subscribing to Lynda.com, an online training company that has high-quality tutorials on Vegas (and just about everything else under the sun).

The only thing we didn’t like about Vegas were the tiny icons associated with the Windows Graphical User Interface. To cut Sony some slack, this is endemic to Windows. It’s just that it’s tough on middle-age eyes. Maybe Sony can do some tweaking in this department and give us an option to make the icons bigger.

The great thing about making videos is that it’s such a cool, creative outlet.

However, like any other skill set, you’re going to have to invest a number of hours on this before you’re ready for prime time. It’s not an inherently difficult process to edit video, but in the beginning it’s a huge time sink.

The good news is that after a few months you’re going to be able to create videos that will help your cause — whether it’s a nonprofit or a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.