Video editing
- Thread starter Blade
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Geoff
VIP Member
It depends on what you want to use it for, if you want to use basic editing, movie maker 2 is a great program (although you cant export in mpeg format), but if you want to do advanced editing, use Adobe Premiere Pro, only thing is that premiere costs a ton of money, over $800. go to www.download.com and you can download trials of video editing software. However if you want to use adobe premiere, go to www.adobe.com and download the 30-day free trial.
Kevin O'Connor
New Member
I posted this on another string but thought it might be of some help.
Try not to get frustrated but capturing, editing, rendering and finally out putting a completed project in a usable format on a PC is hard work. It is NOT straight forward and I hate to say that this is were Apple computers perform the best.
I have had the same problem you are having many times and unfortunately I have not yet produced acceptable results either. Here is what I have learned so far;
- The Quality of your final out put is never better then your source. It can come very close but the better your source video footage the better the final out put will be. Don't expect anything nice from video tape formats less then DV only.
- Don't expect broadcast quality from free video editing systems (MS Movie Maker) or from single CCD DV camcorders.
- Your computer system will have a big effect on final quality and the over all process. The faster the better because slow HDD, small memory and to some degree old OS will hinder the process.
- System compatibility with video capture devisees are stumbling blocks. Getting a good video capture card (Fire wire or USB2) is important. Don't use SVIDEO or RCA jacks to record from the source. You get poor quality and will not get all the codec data needed.
- Disable ALL other running programs especially anti-virus programs. Turn off your screen saver and anything that writes to the HDD in the back ground that you may not know of. You don't want any interruptions during the capture process or in any other video editing process for that matter.
- The video rendering process has the greatest effect on final quality. The better the rendering codec is the better the quality. You don't get something for nothing. Only render once because every time your project goes thru the rendering process it degrades quality a little bit.
- Video Formats, I don't know were to start here. If you overcome all the issues above this will be the most problematic issue to deal with. You need to know exactly what you want to do with the final video out put before you start. You need select the correct format to capture the source video in.
Don't let this discourage you. Digital editing is still a lot fun and much better then linear editing. Just go to the move making websites and forums to find out what the semi pros are using. You will probable find that most have paid $400+ for a professional level codec.
Try not to get frustrated but capturing, editing, rendering and finally out putting a completed project in a usable format on a PC is hard work. It is NOT straight forward and I hate to say that this is were Apple computers perform the best.
I have had the same problem you are having many times and unfortunately I have not yet produced acceptable results either. Here is what I have learned so far;
- The Quality of your final out put is never better then your source. It can come very close but the better your source video footage the better the final out put will be. Don't expect anything nice from video tape formats less then DV only.
- Don't expect broadcast quality from free video editing systems (MS Movie Maker) or from single CCD DV camcorders.
- Your computer system will have a big effect on final quality and the over all process. The faster the better because slow HDD, small memory and to some degree old OS will hinder the process.
- System compatibility with video capture devisees are stumbling blocks. Getting a good video capture card (Fire wire or USB2) is important. Don't use SVIDEO or RCA jacks to record from the source. You get poor quality and will not get all the codec data needed.
- Disable ALL other running programs especially anti-virus programs. Turn off your screen saver and anything that writes to the HDD in the back ground that you may not know of. You don't want any interruptions during the capture process or in any other video editing process for that matter.
- The video rendering process has the greatest effect on final quality. The better the rendering codec is the better the quality. You don't get something for nothing. Only render once because every time your project goes thru the rendering process it degrades quality a little bit.
- Video Formats, I don't know were to start here. If you overcome all the issues above this will be the most problematic issue to deal with. You need to know exactly what you want to do with the final video out put before you start. You need select the correct format to capture the source video in.
Don't let this discourage you. Digital editing is still a lot fun and much better then linear editing. Just go to the move making websites and forums to find out what the semi pros are using. You will probable find that most have paid $400+ for a professional level codec.
Leopold Porkstacker
New Member
My choices, in order:
1. Final Cut Pro
2. Adobe Premiere
3. iMovie
1. Final Cut Pro
2. Adobe Premiere
3. iMovie