Video Editing software

[Sgtsaunders69]

This may be off topic... but does anyone have a recommendation for software to edit video? I'm currently using Roxio 2010..but it's so buggy as to bejust about useless when handling HD video. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[DaddyG]

Hi,
On the PC, I have tried Sony Vegas and Avid Studio.

Avid Studio has less bugs, but they're still there. It's generally a pretty good tool.

A lot of people recommend Premiere. I have not used it.

Bear in mind, the less grunty your machine, the more bugs you'll experience.

If you have the time, try the trial versions comprehensively before you fork out your cash.

Regards
DG

 

[altarvic]

AVS is pretty good and cheap multimedia suite
http://avs-video-suite.org

 

[bill hansen]

Even as a relative newcomer to video (several months), I've used a few different programs. Some are quite difficult to learn. But I'm completely sold on Cyberlink Power Director 10. It's relatively easy to learn, there's and excellent user support forum, and there are excellent video tutorials on how to do almost anything you could want to do.

PD 10 is very stable and it's lightning fast at rendering video. There are good default rendering templates in the program - but you can easily create your own rendering template if you like. Also, PD is flexible and powerful. You can change white balance, color balance (separately), brightness, contrast, backlighting, sharpness, and a half dozen other things if you like. There are more "special effects" possble than anyone would ever want - but some of them, like cropping, zooming, picture-in-picture, subtitles, chapters and subchapters - are useful with most videos you'll make.

PD is significantly less costly than Vega, and from what I've read it's much easier to learn and to use.

There's a free trial version, fully functional for 1 month.

--
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY, USA

 

[Carey Brown]

I use Premier Pro and I'm very happy with it, it is very robust and can off-load some of the computation to your GPU (see Adobe for compatibility). I started out with Premiere Elements which had most of the functionality I needed at the time but it would occasionally crash so I had to save often (I don't think my machine at the time could keep up). I switched to PP because there was some functionality that I wanted.

Here's where the problems arose. I had several projects in Elements that I was working on and Adobe provided no means to convert an Elements project to a PP project. Fortunately I wasn't so far into them that I couldn't start over.

It is unfortunate that you work with video files that are standardized and usable by software available from many vendors, but that the project files are proprietary. This is, in hind sight, why I'm glad I had decided to go with PP, I expect it to be around for many years to come and I expect it to keep pace with the growing needs of video editors (you and me).
--
A pixel is a terrible thing to waste.

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Thanks... will do.

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Thanks for the heads up... I'll give it a try!

 

[plantdoc]

Corel Video Studio X5 works for me and doesn't seem to require the most powerful PC. The learning curve for basic movies was fairly easy. I couldn't get the "hang" of Elements Premiere even though I use PS Elements for stills.

Greg

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Didn't Corel just buy out Roxio?

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Just tried installing the demo of this on my XPPro machine..... it asks if I want to run trial or buy, then it gets to the initial spash screen, churns for a while, shows a DOS window for a second or two ... way too fast to read, then blows up.... never starts. Not a good sign for new software!

 

[Cy Cheze]

Corel paid $18m for Roxio and $17m for Pinnacle, which translates to about $2 for each registered user of the last two or three versions of the two groups of products. Corel's gamble is that it can entice perhaps half of those loyal users to buy a refurbished version X+1 of the legacy products. If each sells for $100, and it earns a 5% margin on each, Corel may recoup its investment by year two.

Pinnacle 16 appeared three weeks ago, not long after the sale from Avid to Corel. The product is essentially version 2 of the "Avid Studio" product that appeared in early 2011. Can't say how it compares to PowerDirector, but there is a trial version. Roxio was handy because of other utilities the product bundled.

Whatever the software, it helps to have a 64-bi fast ti7 PC with the strongest graphics card specs. People who shoot everything in 1080 60p @ 28mbps are also gluttons for punishment, since that strains the PC and the output has to be compressed a lot before sharing anyway.

PowerDirector and the latest Vegas Movie Studio are supposed to be fully 64-bit compliant. Is Premier Elements 64-bit based or merely 32-bit with some accomodations for higher RAM?

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Don't know about the 64 bit issue, but PowerDirector won't even install on my Dell Inspiron 650 Laptop running WinXP Pro SP3 even though the machine easily meets the specs.

 

[diverroy]

--I started with Adobe Premiere Elements. Very easy to use and did most of the things that I needed.

I now have Premiere Pro. The basics are very easy and there are many very helpful on line video tutorials. From these tutorials you can learn to use the more complex parts.
It gives me all that I need at the moment but when I need more it is there .
Diverroy

 

[bill hansen]

Sorry you had that trouble. The current version of PD is 64 bits, I think. I'll bet your XP machine is 32 bits. Mine is. If you're still interested in trying PD, see if you can download an earlier version, such as PD 9. It won't render as fast as PD 10, but almost all of the other features are there.
--
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY, USA

 

[bill hansen]

I think Adobe Premier Elements is a very good bet. I haven't used it personally, but I've seen a gal (at a still photo symposium I attended) use it, and in her hands it worked well. She was using it on a laptop, which I doubt was 64 bits (but I don't know for sure).

I think Elements is not as easy to learn as PD, but quite a few people use it and like it.

I'd stay far away from any program which incorporates Pinnacle. I am a refugee from Pinnacle - used it for several months, about 2 years ago. It was so slow and so hard to learn that I got discouraged and quit trying to do video for more than a year. The support was essentially absent too. Of course, it could have changed a lot since then.

--
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY, USA

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

That's good to know... I've had enough of crappy support with Roxio... don't need to go back down THAT road!!

 

[Sgtsaunders69]

Hmmm.. will try that. Thanks! You'd think they would would code to check for that during the download and install setup...

 

[Sean Nelson]

People who shoot everything in 1080 60p @ 28mbps are also gluttons for punishment, since that strains the PC and the output has to be compressed a lot before sharing anyway.

This strikes me as being kind of like saying that it's stupid for still photographers to shoot in RAW format since all the photo sharing sites use JPEG...

 

[RNvideo]

I've been doing video professionally for a couple years now, I work primarily with Final Cut Pro, but from what I've seen with the more affordable PC suites, Premiere Essentials and Vegas are the two I would recommend.

The adobe software is especially great because it gives you a basic understanding of how the software works and if you ever get into video more seriously and want to move up to the full production suite you'll already have a working knowledge of the software.

 

[bill hansen]

This sounds like good advice to me, providing Essentials will work with a 32 bit machine. It will probably render more slowly than PD, but if necessary that can be done while you sleep, drink coffee, etc......
--
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY, USA