T
-
Welcome to the new forums! Please read this first. For known issues we are working to resolve, click here.
Favourite "serious" video editing software?
- Thread starter leggeron
- Start date
Bobby Rue Goldberg
Forum Enthusiast
- Messages
- 458
- Solutions
- 1
- Reaction score
- 599
Videomaker - Learn video production and editing, camera reviews
Videomaker helps you make better video with educational articles and videos. Find camera reviews, opinions and news about the video industry.
www.videomaker.com
I took left eye's advice and Google'd Vegas vs FCP and found one notable name that used to use FCP and switched to Vegas "and never looked back".
That's worth more than a thousand amateur fanboys in my book. If he had always used Vegas, it would be one thing, but it's the whole try it one time and switch thing that stands out.
BTW, Survivor Man used to be one of my favorite reality shows.
Petar Veliki
Forum Enthusiast
- Messages
- 256
- Reaction score
- 94
Anybody use DaVinci Resolve ?
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
I use Adobe Premiere Pro. I haven't used Premiere Elements for a long time, but when I did it had the same basic interface as Premiere Pro, and I assume that's still the case.
The interface has a learning curve, but I found that once I put the hours to learn it it became very easy to do even fairly complex tasks. And the interface is very customizable - it's easy to switch to different window pane arrangements that facilitate editing, grading, sound mixing, etc.
The interface has a learning curve, but I found that once I put the hours to learn it it became very easy to do even fairly complex tasks. And the interface is very customizable - it's easy to switch to different window pane arrangements that facilitate editing, grading, sound mixing, etc.
Last edited:
Vlad S
Senior Member
For "serious" video work I find Premiere Pro provides much more precise control than FCP. In its quest for intuitiveness I think FCP has made it more difficult to perform operations that require precision.
xerophytenyc
Forum Enthusiast
- Messages
- 434
- Solutions
- 1
- Reaction score
- 94
I use Davinci Resolve Lite (Free) for coloring, then import to Sony Vegas Pro for rendering.
Sony MXF files work very well as intermediates for round tripping, but not for 4K. As of now, looks like the Cineform/Gopro files will work for 4k without degredation.
Sony MXF files work very well as intermediates for round tripping, but not for 4K. As of now, looks like the Cineform/Gopro files will work for 4k without degredation.
...I'm MAC based, so never tried Vegas,
I'm sure once one gets their head around the slightly different interfaces they all do pretty much the same, as to which is better, it maybe just personal preference or having used one rather than other for the past several years.
As a FCPX user on a MAC I do though wonder if Premiere would offer more fine and deep control?
I'm sure once one gets their head around the slightly different interfaces they all do pretty much the same, as to which is better, it maybe just personal preference or having used one rather than other for the past several years.
As a FCPX user on a MAC I do though wonder if Premiere would offer more fine and deep control?
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
I have no FCPX experience whatsoever. I can tell you that with Premier Pro it's very easy to zoom in on a timeline to see individual frames, and effects can be animated using keyframes. By "animated" I mean that you can tell Premiere to vary how effects are applied over any number of frames.
For example, let's say that you have some footage that you shot using Auto White Balance, and the camera decided to shift the colour balance halfway through the clip. Premier Pro has "fast" and "three-way" (shadow/midrange/highlight) color corrector effects that you can apply to the clip that let you control the colour corrections, including hue, tint, whitepoint, blackpoint, gamma, saturation, etc. All of these controls can be set using sliders or by direct entry of numeric values for precise control.
If your clip is 5 seconds long and the white balance starts to shift at the 2-second mark and completes it's shift at the 3-second mark, then you can set keyframes at those two points and specify all of the necessary color correction effect settings for both keyframes so that the colour matches at the 2- and 3-second marks. And you can control the rate of change of those settings between the two keyframes using linear extrapolation, bezier curves, etc. If necessary, you can add additional intermediate keyframes to exercise more precise control.
When you combine this animation capability with Premiere's myriad effects and layer masking capabilities, it makes for a tremendously powerful platform.
Adrian Van
Leading Member
- Messages
- 684
- Reaction score
- 393
Hands down, Vegas is faster to use than Premiere (I have used both), with its drop and drag ability. I do wedding videos with the Pro version of Vegas. Taught my wife to use Vegas and basic editing in only hours. Some tutorials online I think, and come with the software. Vegas can output to multiple formats of all types and input most formats from popular cameras. Relatively easy to learn and can do 90 per cent or more of what the more expensive programs offer in the pro arena, but faster to learn.
Consumer version has a lot of features too, with Vegas Movie Studio.
imovie is very simple in nature by comparison with very limited features.
If you are on the mac, though Vegas is only windows, so then Final Cut Xpress looks good, and better than imovie. Premiere Elements works on mac. Unless you run Vegas in bootcamp with windows.
Windows has Vegas as one of best choices for video for amateur or pro (now in Version 13 for Pro) and reasonably priced.
Consumer version has a lot of features too, with Vegas Movie Studio.
imovie is very simple in nature by comparison with very limited features.
If you are on the mac, though Vegas is only windows, so then Final Cut Xpress looks good, and better than imovie. Premiere Elements works on mac. Unless you run Vegas in bootcamp with windows.
Windows has Vegas as one of best choices for video for amateur or pro (now in Version 13 for Pro) and reasonably priced.
Last edited:
Thanks. I will get the consumer sony platinum vetsion. I cant justify the cost of a pro version as im just a hobbyist. one thing that irks me though is that out of camera footage seems somewhat crisper than when it goes through the vegas software. -- ** I usually post from my phone so please excuse any typos, inappropriate punctuation and capitalization, missing words and general lack of cohesion and sense in my posts... ______ http://www.flickr.com/photos/leggeron/ Just so you know how good/bad I am at this.
Adrian Van
Leading Member
- Messages
- 684
- Reaction score
- 393
There are quality settings on output with the Vegas software, learn the menus for output and pick the higher quality video settings with least compression. If more compression, then softer video. There are lots of these options in Vegas Pro, so not sure how many options for quality settings (like "High" it would say in Pro version under Video output menu tab) available in the Movie Studio Platinum.
Wikipedia may have info on video format settings may help. I often go there for information on formats for BluRay or MP4 options so different compression settings. I also output to higher res. settings in Mpeg2 or AVCHD in Vegas for DVD or BluRay with menus, then do a second copy format with ACDSee Video Convertor Pro 4 (not very expensive software but very useful) for MP4 options. DIVX software (not expensive to buy) is also useful, to reduce video noise from small sensor video cameras in dark locations, with its DIVX HD Plus convertor, then I convert to MP4 with ACDSee Video Convertor Pro 4.
These last 2 softwares are convertors, but the editing I do in Vegas first and output. Then convert to other formats with these 2 softwares, to get file sizes down, such as posting to Vimeo online for example. You can research these softwares to see if any convertors are useful to you. But in Vegas find the highest output setting in the output menus and you could save as a preset if consumer version allows and use each time for repeat style projects.
If you are not outputting video for DVD or BluRay, but just for computer, MP4 at high quality is good choice, as is MOV files. MP4 though plays in both mac and windows. Mov needs Quicktime on windows to play for consumers.
Good luck.
Wikipedia may have info on video format settings may help. I often go there for information on formats for BluRay or MP4 options so different compression settings. I also output to higher res. settings in Mpeg2 or AVCHD in Vegas for DVD or BluRay with menus, then do a second copy format with ACDSee Video Convertor Pro 4 (not very expensive software but very useful) for MP4 options. DIVX software (not expensive to buy) is also useful, to reduce video noise from small sensor video cameras in dark locations, with its DIVX HD Plus convertor, then I convert to MP4 with ACDSee Video Convertor Pro 4.
These last 2 softwares are convertors, but the editing I do in Vegas first and output. Then convert to other formats with these 2 softwares, to get file sizes down, such as posting to Vimeo online for example. You can research these softwares to see if any convertors are useful to you. But in Vegas find the highest output setting in the output menus and you could save as a preset if consumer version allows and use each time for repeat style projects.
If you are not outputting video for DVD or BluRay, but just for computer, MP4 at high quality is good choice, as is MOV files. MP4 though plays in both mac and windows. Mov needs Quicktime on windows to play for consumers.
Good luck.
Adrian Van
Leading Member
- Messages
- 684
- Reaction score
- 393
Keyframing video with effects all possible with Vegas Pro as well as zooming into timeline to finetune the video effect. My friend uses Premiere and I use Vegas Pro. We can achieve much of the same things. I took a few classes in Final Cut, although can do much of the same, still preferred Vegas for its thoughfully applied built in editing features to speed up the job.
Auto cross dissolve fades on clips, just drag together to cross dissolve, snap to video edges, sony effects filters, and under clip: properties - normalize audio, which boosts audio automatically to normal volume levels (if sound too low) to name a few, and audio feature of - add the volume line to raise or lower segments of audio manually in sections with points. Fade in and fade out audio or fade in and out video just by dragging the edge of a clip corner and it fades. Simple and fast and effective. Vegas did it first in its toolset (used it at version 4 now in 13 in Pro), maybe FC and Premiere do some of this now built in to video and audio bar.
Last edited:
Daniel Mores
Forum Enthusiast
I use Final Cut Pro X, now. But even iMovie is awesome. One thing they both have that I love is the way they archive your footage. It's all in there, everything you added. No dragging around folders etc ....
But since you're not on a Mac, I remembered a few years ago I started editing with Avid Free DV. Unfortunately, this program is no longer available and the new Avid Suite is expensive.
Googling around I found this: Lightworks.
No idea if it's good or not, but it is free. And there's a pro version for not too much dineros if you like the program and want more stuff. Looks good, for me, and they have a bunch of hollywood movies that were cut on light works.
But since you're not on a Mac, I remembered a few years ago I started editing with Avid Free DV. Unfortunately, this program is no longer available and the new Avid Suite is expensive.
Googling around I found this: Lightworks.
No idea if it's good or not, but it is free. And there's a pro version for not too much dineros if you like the program and want more stuff. Looks good, for me, and they have a bunch of hollywood movies that were cut on light works.
Bobby Rue Goldberg
Forum Enthusiast
- Messages
- 458
- Solutions
- 1
- Reaction score
- 599
If you don't want to do any of the effects, noise reduction, etc. that Vegas offers, there is an option where you won't lose any quality at all. There are programs that do lossless cutting, meaning that you just cut out the parts that you don't want, then save the video in the original quality, without rendering.
For AVCHD and any format you're likely to encounter on a consumer camera, AviDemux is probably the best. Just do copy/copy for audio/video and output as one of the MP4 options or MKV.
If you have an AVI file you want to cut, VirtualDub is a good option.
If you still want to do the rendering, titles, effects, or NR that Vegas offers, you can do that and output the file using the Lagarith lossless codec. It's going to be an AVI file that retains all of the original quality of your video, then you can do the final compression with any program you choose. It's well known that certain programs/codecs are better than others at compression, so using Vegas/Lagarith might be a good option for using one of those other programs that only do compression and nothing else.
Video is tough to get right, and it takes experience and patience. But you should expect that any final output is not going to be as good as the original. One exception to this rule is when I use Neat Video or some other advanced NR program, then do the final compression. Sometimes I think the final result looks better than the original.
Good luck.
Desert Cruiser
Forum Enthusiast
I'm not quite sure what you mean by serious video editing software, but we use Core's VideoStudio Pro X7 Ultimate and it's less that $100 and does everything you guys are looking for plus a lot more. I can be an easy to learn software, or it has all the options/features you'd ever want. It does work with 4K video and will save video files in any format you could ever want, including BlueRay. We use it extensively for all our video work. Here's an example
We use it for video editing and slideshows for photos and almost always save it as MPEG4 1980X1080 for clarity. There are numerous transitions witch are customizable and picture or video in a video, and numerous other effects including Mercali Stabilizer, Blue title effects and you can work in the timeline with numerous other options, sound recording, music insertion, and hundreds more.
Don...
We use it for video editing and slideshows for photos and almost always save it as MPEG4 1980X1080 for clarity. There are numerous transitions witch are customizable and picture or video in a video, and numerous other effects including Mercali Stabilizer, Blue title effects and you can work in the timeline with numerous other options, sound recording, music insertion, and hundreds more.
Don...
Found the quality settings, thanks!
--
** I usually post from my phone so please excuse any typos, inappropriate punctuation and capitalization, missing words and general lack of cohesion and sense in my posts...
______
Just so you know how good/bad I am at this.
--
** I usually post from my phone so please excuse any typos, inappropriate punctuation and capitalization, missing words and general lack of cohesion and sense in my posts...
______
Just so you know how good/bad I am at this.
Bob Carstens
Senior Member
I use version 11 also, is there any control of the compression mentioned in one of the threads with Power Director?
IanYorke
Veteran Member
Similar threads
Keyboard shortcuts
- f
- Forum