Thirith on 7/1/2008 at 08:34
I'm currently looking for a powerful yet inexpensive video editing suite. When I was still at university, I worked with Adobe Premiere and Avid DV, but I was far from using all of the functions. Basically, what I want is: non-linear editing, keyframeable effects, multiple video and audio tracks, plus effects such as transitions, some simpe colour coding and the like. Ideally some simple DVD authoring should be included. And I don't want to spend more than, say, $100.
The names that seem to pop up most often are these: Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio 11 (probably the Plus edition), Ulead Video Studio 11. Anyone here have any experience with them? Any pointers? Your help would be much appreciated.
demagogue on 7/1/2008 at 08:58
Funny enough, I was just looking up this exact same question and running into the same names. In fact, I was just reading (
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=274564) this thread ... where a few people were making the case for (
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp) Vegas Movie Studio ($79-$119), which was a name I was also seeing but not as often recommended. But they made a good case here (the only thing is that thread is a year old, but I'm wondering how much the new versions change things), but after a little more research into it I'm almost sold on it.
My working assumption was they all have about the same functionality and can do the general job (unless there's something very specific you want to do), so I started noticing what sorts of people were recommending what sorts of software, and my general impression is (don't take my word for it, I don't know, I'm just reporting my impression), if you're going to be editing home videos=Pinnacle (less so Ulead), making pretty userfriendly stuff like AMV's=Adobe, and rolling up your sleeves for more polished projects, like small films or videos=Vegas. It's also the kind of people (lower-budget, anyway) that tend towards each one: suburban (Pinnacle), fanboy (Adobe), closet artist (Vegas) ... which might make a difference with the kinds of tutorials you'll find, or how they tailor the interface, I guess (probably not as much as I'm imagining, though).
So since my personality fits most with the latter, Vegas is looking good to me right now.
But of course I would love to hear from people that have actual experience. So I'm happy you started the thread.
Thirith on 7/1/2008 at 09:32
From what you've written, it sounds like I'd be the Vegas type: pretentious wannabe arthouse wanker. :p The program's functions sound pretty good, so I think I'll download the trial version and see what I can do with it. Thanks!
I'd love to hear other people's experiences with video editing software, though.
theBlackman on 7/1/2008 at 09:41
I use the Vegas Studio +DVD Ver.6. It is fairly versitile, but it won't handle MPEG4 if you will be working with some of the newer cameras. The most current version has some more bells and whistles, and will run with Vista.
A application that you can use along with it that will convert nearly any format of Video to any other is:
(
http://www.effectmatrix.com/)
Total Video Converter.
Muzman on 7/1/2008 at 10:33
I'm not much with that sort of home based stuff yet, but a lot does depend on your source material and your intended finish format(s) of course. I believe a lot of the newer software is designed to edit in the native camera standards doing the rounds at the moment like MP4 and AVCHD, which sounds like a total nightmare for rendering performance and picture quality. But for mucking about with home video it's probably great. Then again, anything not designed to work with these new in-camera formats could cause even more havok converting everything back and forth. So I dunno (Vegas does look pretty good).
I guess I'm asking; what are you working with?
Yakoob on 7/1/2008 at 11:44
I used to use Ulead Video Studio a few years ago and it worked pretty nicely with a good set of features. If Ulead keept their stuff up with time, it might be worth checking it out.
Thirith on 7/1/2008 at 12:23
Quote Posted by Muzman
I'm not much with that sort of home based stuff yet, but a lot does depend on your source material and your intended finish format(s) of course. I believe a lot of the newer software is designed to edit in the native camera standards doing the rounds at the moment like MP4 and AVCHD, which sounds like a total nightmare for rendering performance and picture quality. But for mucking about with home video it's probably great. Then again, anything not designed to work with these new in-camera formats could cause even more havok converting everything back and forth. So I dunno (Vegas does look pretty good).
I guess I'm asking; what are you working with?
The video camera I have (for the office, mainly) is previous-gen, as far as I know. It's a JVC GZ-MG70E. (I've only got a Dutch manual lying around right now, so I can't tell you what format it records in.)
I'd primarily use the program to edit films that would then end up on YouTube, documenting work projects. However, I'd also want to make short original films, mock-documentary style mostly, or edits of theatre productions (recorded from multiple angles, but still amateur rather than pro). For those, the intended final product would be DVDs, but still amateur.
Mazian on 7/1/2008 at 16:07
For the love of all that is holy, avoid Pinnacle Movie Studio. It is the most finicky bitch of an editor from hell you are likely to encounter. About a year ago I bought an analog to digital video converter for backing up certain of my MST3K episodes that are unlikely to see a DVD release and I've done nothing but fight that fucking program. It's bloat-ware, takes forever to load, takes forever to do anything, and, best of all, it fucking crashes all the time for the most random of reasons.
It not only crashes while editing, it'll crash after rendering 85% of a DVD, leaving you with a coaster. The last project I completed with this horrible program I couldn't even get the menus to work properly (they kept messing up for no reason), and don't even try to do a multi-page menu because it can't handle them. For the record, my computer exceeds the system requirements and I even installed a second hard-drive so I could "quarantine" the program and the captured files to improve system stability. It didn't work. At the moment I only have it installed because it's the only software that will recognize my capture hardware, otherwise I would have shit-canned it a long time ago.
On the other hand, Vegas Studio and DVD Architect are awesome. Studio is for editing the raw footage, and Architect is for putting the DVD together (Title and menu pages, chapter stops, etc.) I mainly use Architect as I do very little "fancy" editing, but I've used Vegas enough to tell that it can do a lot of cool things. And, most importantly, the Vegas suite is rock-fucking solid. I've had exactly one bad burn, and that was after running the program continuously for three or four days as I kept recompiling and reburning one of my first projects when I was figuring out the program. It's crashed once or twice and it doesn't like certain video or audio formats (I've had it freak out over substituting an mp3 on the audio track, for example), but compared to the Pinnacle POS it's a breath of fresh air. Besides, when Vegas crashes I can almost immediately determine what's causing it (and remedy it) rather than Pinnacle's "God just hates you, okay?"-style of program failure.
Some say Vegas is harder to use than other programs but as far as I'm concerned every video-editing program has a somewhat steep learning curve so you may as well just jump in with both feet and figure it out. It was admittedly less intuitive than Pinnacle but it's much faster and the differences ultimately don't amount to much.
No matter which program you end up with, invest in some DVD-RW's. That way you can tweak your project a lot (or absorb a bad burn) without spending a mint in media. And, if it turns out okay, you can then just copy the DVD-RW onto a permanent DVD.
Muzman on 7/1/2008 at 16:12
Well, going by (
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-GZ-MG70-Camcorder-Review.htm) this ere review (assuming the 'e' is largely the same) it takes standard def clips in an Mpeg2 format at about 8.5Mb/s. So these days you can probably drag and drop them into most things and they'd be ok I guess. (I couldn't find out anything about the 'e' at a glance. I guess it's got a few extras and/or it's got PAL standard innards). I guess it depends on how Vegas or whatever handles file formats and projects. I really only know recent info on Final Cut and in that you set the video format at project level and any clips imported are rendered to match. This can be annoying as if the clip differs in any way from the settings (using a
slightly different bit rate and/or codec version) Final Cut will re render it to match its own. But really you're not supposed to be working with low spec stuff in there anyway and everyone uses some fullspec DV or offline reference clips if the data rate/frame size is a little too mean for the machine to edit in real time.
So, yeah, I really don't know what it's like working natively in some compressed camera format and not much help there. My guess it's a whole can of worms for the image obsessed, but you gotta make do with what you've got.
I'd love to know what "fanboy" means as it pertains to Adobe use though. :D
