Best Editing Programme

Hi

Sorry as This question may have been discussed before, but search did not produce anything,

I got couple of project doing Machinima using SL on a PC. Although I also have a iMac but it is the old G4 and rather slow for SL. so I need to use my dual processor PC for that.

I have the old Premier 6.5 and that shows how long ago i did any editing. But i have a feeling that using premier and upgrading may be an over kill. I do not like using it anyway as I feel it is designed for professionals and i just want to do these 3 short videos each 5 minutes and will probably not touch it for a few years. Windows Movie Maker is to simplistic although it has helped me with doing quick home video stuff.

I do need to add sound later too. so may be Premier is my only option.

Any advice is very much appreciated as my skills are indeed very rusty.

Salar

Personally I use Sony Vegas http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp?keycode=3138-3000 the Pro version is very good, albiet a steep learning curve.

Many thanks

Looks good and free trial too.

Salar

Just upgraded to Adobe Premiere CS3. Hellishly expensive, but the best program available on Windows.

OMG, there are so many great video editing programs out there.

If you're familiar with Premiere, and/or you use other Adobe products like Photoshop, the Adobe CS3 Production Bundle is a fantastically tightly integrated suite of graphics programs. Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and others. Expensive, but you can do darn near anything involving images...moving or still. If you do a lot of video editing, you can get additional real time capabilities with a Matrox RTx2 system, which uses Premiere.

My favorite is Sony Vegas. They've just released version 8. If you'll be outputting to DVD, I strongly urge getting the Vegas/DVD Architect bundle. Vegas works a little differently than many other editing programs, but in my personal opinion, it's a more intuitive way to work.

Avid's Liquid is another great option. It has a very professional interface, and a bit (well, quite a lot) of a learning curve...but it produces very clean video, integrates different formats well on the same timeline, and contains built-in DVD authoring.

If you do 3D animation work at all, NewTek's SpeedEdit, or the hardware-assisted Video Toaster, are prime candidates for you. They're tightly integrated with NewTek's powerful LightWave 3D modeling and animation program. Both these products and Liquid have powerful storyboarding capabilities, a good alternative work flow for some projects.

In the end, the choice of an editing program is a personal one. It's important to choose the one that works the way you do, not necessarily the one that I like, or that gets the best product review in the magazines. Download and experiment with demos, go to a video supply house and get a hands on demo, purchase a training tape...anything, so long as you can see it, and get a feel for its operation.

Actually, that's a very good point "It's important to choose the one that works the way you do", so many programmes are made and designed by programmers, with little thought to those that only want to use it to be creative and whats more important, productive.

Nothing more frustrating searching through generic menus to get to what should be 'basic facilities' renamed into some jargon based marketeering.

It's a pity Macromedia hasn't brought out a product that was intergrated with the Dreamweaver suite, which I am familiar with. I do prefer the 'feel' of Macromedia products and always fire up Fireworks for graphic uses, long before I serach the Adobe Photoshop icon.

Another important point, is the levels between a products range. Some seem to offer a bare bones cut down version, then either an imediate leap to a full blown package, leaving you feeling that you wished you have paid the extra. If they offer an intermediatry package, is only seems to include those items that you will probably never use from the full package. It would be awesome to have programmes in modules, so you could add a module to the baseline package, selecting only those you need and upgrade in stages.

Best advice, download and try as many Trial packages that you can.

I'd also suggest checking out Cinema 4d. Powerful and easy to use, plus it intergrates with After Effects seamlessly. Very popular amongst the motion graphics community.

BTW I use AE for short stuff and Premiere for long jobs.

But, Scribe...unless I missed something, C4D is a modeling/animation program, like Maya and LightWave. The OP asked about video editing programs.

I mentioned the VT and Speed Edit, because they are video editing programs...which just happen to integrate well with a 3D modeling/animation package.

And After Effects shouldn't be equated to Premiere. They both manipulate moving images, but their focus is very different. AE is primarily a compositing program...a way to do complex, multilayered special effects. Premiere is an editing program.

That's one of the neat things about Adobe Creative Suite, by the way...you can create graphics in Photoshop, composite them in moving layers in After Effects, and apply the whole thing as a clip or a layered effect to a larger video project in Premiere...all with the same basic user interface. Once you know one app, the others are very easy to pick up, and files can be zapped from one to the other with ease.

There's always Windows Movie Maker. =)

Correct, but since you mentioned 3d anim work and specifically Lightwave I thought I'd throw in my 2 bits. As stated, C4d works really well with AE, which is my weapon of choice for short projects. In fact I'd ditch Premiere altogether if doing longer projects weren't so fiddly and the audio was better. I prefer AE as an editor. It allows me to do more and, for the most part, better. Especially when there is even minor alterations (like colour correction) needed to a video. Premiere (and to a certain extent even FCP) is a travesty when it comes to manipulation and lets not even go into how primitive the masking and titles are. But that said, my work rate improves in Premiere compared to AE when the project gets longer. Then the benefits of the NLE timeline come to the fore.

Basically what I'm saying is that there are lots of ways to flog a horse. Choose the best one that works for you.

Wow I'm so glad I saw this thread. I've been needing an upgrade from Windows Movie Maker. I needed something that would give me better precision when sequencing clips, and showed me the little "shape" of the audio so I can align visible events with the soundtrack. The Vegas Movie Studio looks perfect for me- and I don't need even need any of the 'platinum' or 'pro' features!

You broke my heart, just saying that. You know how hard it is to superglue a heart back together?

Well, I just need an editing program, period. I have Windows 2000, so I don't even have MovieMaker. I have been looking and looking, and have yet to find any editing programs at all (no doubt, I'm just dim, but really, I've been googling for a week).

I need one that is--

a) Compatible with Windows 2000
b) In a dream world, free. More realistically, in the $50-75 range with a free trial.
c) must be able to cut and splice AVI files (I use FRAPS for screen capture), perhaps do something as fancy as dissolve in and out, and add an audio track. That's all I want to do, really.

Any ideas out there? I really don't want to spend too much, this is just for fun for me.

I bet Avidemux would run on Windows 2000:
http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

It's free and looks pretty good. There's a wiki with tutorials for it:
http://www.avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

It DOES seem to work, but is a bit thin with regard to documentation. I hate to say it, but I spent all afternoon with it and never could get the embedded audio to play, less so much as edit it. I finally found an online manual someone made (their wiki is...difficult). From the first line:

"Avidemux is a free video editor. It is not really designed for beginner so if you have no experience with video editors this is probably not he right application to choose."

I think I'm going to have to just break down and upgrade to XP. Video editing isn't the only software I'm beginning to notice isn't compatible, besides.

One zero budget solution is:

http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

plus

http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/

for effects