Home Video Producer from 1988 was a creative tool developed for the Apple II series and released by Epyx as part of its Designer Series. It allowed home users to create personalized, animated title sequences and graphics overlays for their VHS recordings—essentially bringing desktop video editing to the average camcorder owner. The program featured a menu-driven interface with selectable icons for adding colorful text, animated transitions, backdrops, borders, and graphics. Users could preview their video segments before committing them to tape, and select from a variety of type styles and screen effects like wipes and fades, all with adjustable speeds. These segments were then recorded by routing the computer’s video output through a VCR, letting users decorate their home movies with professional-looking intros and title cards. Aimed at families looking to enhance birthday parties, weddings, vacations, and other personal footage, Home Video Producer made desktop video titling accessible in the era before digital editing—a clever and practical utility for the VHS generation.

There’s something sweet about the fact that this was an Apple II product, and many decades later the debut of iMovie (for free!) on the Mac opened up movie editing to the world.  But it’s pretty clear that importing VHS tapes (fun fact – this stood for Video Home System and was developed by JVC – Victor Company of Japan – in the 1970s) is not something that most video editors want to do today (let alone finding the hardware to do it!). We’re going to leave this product as an archived product and just relish the fact that renting a movie today (obviously digitally — or even on DVD/BluRay if those still exist) won’t subject you to an unexpected “you forgot to rewind the tape” fee.