Video Editing Software

[Thomas J]

I am in the process of converting 15 years of family VHS tapes to DVD. My goal is to get them into my computer then edit them so that voice over tracks, music tracks (GPO original music), and graphics can be edited.

Can anybody suggest a decent video editing software package that does not have a huge learning curve.

Thanks

[RickD]

I am in the process of converting 15 years of family VHS tapes to DVD. My goal is to get them into my computer then edit them so that voice over tracks, music tracks (GPO original music), and graphics can be edited.

Can anybody suggest a decent video editing software package that does not have a huge learning curve.

Thanks

i-movie works and it's included in all versions of mac OSX 10.3 and up.

[rbowser-]

Premiere Elements from Adobe - Solid, intuitive, EAsy but not dumbly limited, and is built to interact seamlessly with any version of Photo Shop you may have, which of course is The program for creating titles and graphics.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[reberclark]

Sony's Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Architect (not the full Vegas version) is a great package. I have used it for short films, presentations, and just re-formatting. It's relatively inexpensive and thorough.

[David Guinness]

I have to agree with Randy on this: PE 3.0.2 is the newest version of Premiere Elements, and is by far the most stable video editor I've ever used. It's somewhat more stable than Vegas, and much more stable than Pinnacle Studio. It also integrates a very good DVD Menu Editor, and supports most every video format used today, including HDVideo. As Randy said, you can create highly-customized templates, specialized titles, and graphics for PE with any version of Photoshop. (You can find Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements bundled for around $149)

It's also inexpensive: $99, or $64.95 if you can purchase from Academic Superstore. There's also a $30 mail-in rebate if you choose to use it. Unless you plan to do professional video work, PE is a great option. I believe the only major features different from Adobe Premiere are what royalty-free media is included, and full surround-sound audio support.

Finally, for your VHS capture, you might consider this: http://www.amazon.com/ADS-Tech-API-555-Pyro-Link/dp/B0007KI7SU
This external IEEE1394 capture card captures in DV-AVI, and is bundled with Premiere Elements. I've not personally used it, but this is what everybody on the Adobe Forum recommends.

My apologies if I sound like a salesman, but I've just had PE3 for a couple of months, and I've been extremely pleased.

[C J Pro]

i-movie works and it's included in all versions of mac OSX 10.3 and up.

Use iMovie '06, not iMovie '08. Apparently, iMovie '08 has less functionality than iMovie '06.

Windows - Adobe Production Premium (Arm, Leg, and First Born)
Mac - Final Cut Studio ($1,299)
Linux - Vino (Free)

[JonFairhurst]

If you are a Windows user, I can strongly recommend Vegas - especially for a musician/audio engineer. I use Sonar for MIDI, but I always do my mixing in Vegas. The full version is very powerful, but is much cheaper than Adobe Production CS3 or Final Cut.

Vegas' user interface simply falls to hand. It follows most Windows UI conventions, and you can do most everything on a single large window. We use it for our Colonel Crush series, usually under time pressure.

This past weekend we produced a 48-hour film. We got musical. I sequenced the temp MIDI in Sonar, exported the waves, then recorded the voices in Vegas. The workflow is perfect for looped multi-take recordings and punch ins. After recording a continuous set of takes, you just playback the loop and press "T" to hear the next take. As soon as you say "that's it!" you can move to the next phrase.

The latest version of Vegas is 7. V8 will be announced next month. We do standard def, and still use V5. Take a look at B&H Photo and other online retailers. You can get pre-7 versions of Vegas (DVD only) for next to nothing.

If you're on the Mac, never mind...

[Steve_Karl]

If you are a Windows user, I can strongly recommend Vegas - especially for a musician/audio engineer. I use Sonar for MIDI, but I always do my mixing in Vegas. The full version is very powerful, but is much cheaper than Adobe Production CS3 or Final Cut.

Vegas' user interface simply falls to hand. It follows most Windows UI conventions, and you can do most everything on a single large window. We use it for our Colonel Crush series, usually under time pressure.

This past weekend we produced a 48-hour film. We got musical. I sequenced the temp MIDI in Sonar, exported the waves, then recorded the voices in Vegas. The workflow is perfect for looped multi-take recordings and punch ins. After recording a continuous set of takes, you just playback the loop and press "T" to hear the next take. As soon as you say "that's it!" you can move to the next phrase.

The latest version of Vegas is 7. V8 will be announced next month. We do standard def, and still use V5. Take a look at B&H Photo and other online retailers. You can get pre-7 versions of Vegas (DVD only) for next to nothing.

If you're on the Mac, never mind...

Jon,

So, you're using Vegas also for the final render of your web movies?
They do look great.

Steve

[LFO]

I am a Pinnacle Studio user, have been for years. While it is true version 8 had stability problems I have not had a single problem since version 9. The upside to Pinnacle is 1) Price - $79 - $99 depending on what you buy, 2) Plug in support. If you want an effect and you don't have it you can go to the download plug-ins section, download (and pay for) the right plug-in and use it without leaving Studio. I also think the user interface is very intuitive. I think I looked at the manual once. ;)

I've also seen Vegas (though I haven't used it) and it looks like a good program. Adobe products are ok, but to me to pricey.

-Kevin

[Thomas J]

Thanks to all that have offered their suggestions and recommendations. You have certainly given me enough research to do.

Best to all!

Tom

[JonFairhurst]

So, you're using Vegas also for the final render of your web movies?
They do look great.Thanks!

100% of the video editing is done with Vegas. We use Particle Illusion for some of the effects. (An awesome value.) We do the final encode with Sorenson Squeeze and the On2 coder. We give the audio 128 kbps, and the video gets 280 kbps.

The edits are all done in standard definition (720x480) and the final product is 480x270 widescreen.

Probably more than you wanted to know...

BTW, I found Vegas 6 for $99 on B&H's site. It's as powerful as Adobe and Apple's stuff (with some esoteric exceptions), it's completely stable, and it's easy to use.

As an example of its stability, we edited the entire 48-hour film project video on Vegas without a single crash or hiccup. Same thing with the audio recording. No crashes or problems during a weekend when virtually nobody slept.

We will post our musical on August 27th...

[rbowser-]

"...Adobe products are ok, but to me to pricey..."

I just wanted to make sure it's understood that Premiere Elements is an excellent program, out-stripping Vegas in most people's books, and is Way under $100. Adobe is the undoubted champion of every kind of visual program one can name. I can't recommend it too highly.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[David Guinness]

"...Adobe products are ok, but to me to pricey..."

I just wanted to make sure it's understood that Premiere Elements is an excellent program, out-stripping Vegas in most people's books, and is Way under $100. Adobe is the undoubted champion of every kind of visual program one can name. I can't recommend it too highly.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

Once again, I must agree! )(~

[Haydn]

I use the Sony's Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Architect program and find it's a very solid and stable. It supports VST plugins and gives you 4 video and 4 audio tracks. The Movie Studio editing program works quite a bit like an audio sequencer and I found it was easy to learn after using Cakewalk Sonar. The DVD Architect program is quite powerful and I've had excellent results. It's perfect for doing family movies which is about 60% of what I use it for. I've also put together a few live concerts using multiple camera angles and multiple audio sources which worked great and were quite easy to sync together.

Jim

[rbowser-]

"...gives you 4 video and 4 audio tracks..."

That's great--And meanwhile, Adobe Premiere Elements gives you unlimited video and audio tracks. :)

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[Michael_uk]

I am in the process of converting 15 years of family VHS tapes to DVD. My goal is to get them into my computer then edit them so that voice over tracks, music tracks (GPO original music), and graphics can be edited.

Can anybody suggest a decent video editing software package that does not have a huge learning curve.

Thanks
Here's another one for Sony Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Architect. I have just upgraded to the latest Platinum v8. I use it extensively for family films and it's outstanding. It's rock solid and the user forums are excellent. The price is reasonable for such superb software.

Prior to this I started on Pinnacle and it had severe crashing problems, so much so it was unusable. I don't know what the latest versions are like but since moving to Movie Studio I haven't looked back.

[JonFairhurst]

I just wanted to make sure it's understood that Premiere Elements is an excellent program, out-stripping Vegas in most people's books... This might be true comparing Premiere Elements to Vegas Movie Studio, but I'm writing about the full version of Vegas 6 for $100. And, yes, the full version has unlimited audio and video tracks.

If you check out dvinfo.net (probably the most objective and cool headed video site on the net), you will find that many people have ditched the full version of Premiere for the full version of Vegas. The main reasons quoted are a more efficient work flow, stability, ease of use and a roughly equivalent feature set. Note that the list price for Vegas+DVD is about $525, while Adobe's Premiere Pro CS3 is $799. Don't let the $100 price for the old version of Vegas fool you.

So... What would I improve about Vegas?
1) The chroma keyer is rudimentary. So is Premiere's. If you upgrade to Adobe's Production Premium CS3 for $1700, you get Ultra, which does great keys, but needs an expert to drive it.
2) Titling is so-so on Vegas. Same with Premiere. With Production Premium, you get Photoshop and After Effects, which can do great titles, but it takes a pro to use it. Vegas also supports plug ins like Boris for advanced 3d titles.
3) Vegas is limited to 8-bits per color. Premiere Pro will do 8 and 16. This can be a big deal if you're color correcting and outputting to a pro format, or HD disc such as Blu-ray. For DV, 8-bits is fine. (The internal processing is higher during rendering.)
4) The size and position controls in Vegas are effective, but a bit clumsy. Not sure about Premiere.

What rocks in Vegas?
1) Ease of use, stability, workflow. Follows Windows conventions, so its easy to learn.
2) Audio multi-tracking. Super efficient. I can't imagine how to improve it.
3) Color correction. Includes primary and secondary correctors. Can be keyframed on the timeline. World class.

I would strongly recommend the full version of Vegas over Premiere Elements. Vegas vs. Premiere Pro is a tougher call, unless price is important. In that case Vegas wins.

For the job mentioned at the top of the thread, Vegas does everything really well, except advanced 3-d titling. It does 2-d titling with standard fonts, just fine. You can "roll" the titles at the end of the film, no problem. You can vary position, size, opacity, color, rotation and aspect over time to make complex titling effects quite easily.

The ease of use, great color correction and attractive price for the pro version will be great for a VHS dub, edit and title job. As a musician, having access to a great multi-tracker is an added bonus.

To get more insight, check out dvinfo.net. You can get details about the features of all of the pro editing programs there. And after purchase, people can help if you get stuck, regardless of whether you get Vegas or Premiere.

[Michael_uk]

It was a few years ago when I'd had enough of the serious instability of Pinnacle and was looking to ditch it. At the time a few PC magazines were doing feature reviews of all the competing video editing software. It was around the time when Sony had released a 'Studio' version of their fully fledged professional Vegas software which carries a professional price tag to match. Sony had removed some of the 'professional features' of the full version in the Studio version and priced it to compete. In the PC magazine reviews, Vegas Movie Studio with DVD beat all the others. This was the first I'd heard of Movie Studio and ordered my copy. I can't speak highly enough of this; it simply is excellent.

Regarding the tracks (4 audio + 4 video), I have never once run out of tracks. I would have thought 8 were plenty. I can't imagine anyone needing more than that. I think I'd get lost if I had to manage more than my usual three or four tracks :)

Anyway, as has been aknowledged so many times in our forums, we all work with what we are comfortable with, whether this is Finale or Sibelius, Sonar or Cubase, Vegas Movie Studio or Adobe Essentials. As always the best advice is try-before-buy, give the trial versions a run and see what works for you.

[David Guinness]

The one point I will concede about multimedia tracks is this: While it is convenient to have unlimited, or at least plentiful, tracks, most people use two to three most of the time. If you were to run out, you can always mix down what you have as DV-AVI, then add more tracks. So there's really no limit to the number of tracks you can have, no matter what software you use, and there's no loss in quality because the editing is digital.

However, I'm a person who doesn't like having limitations like this set on me; I think you should have the option of as many tracks as you'd ever want, as long as you have the CPU power to back them.

[JonFairhurst]

Speaking of tracks, you can add as many busses as you like in Vegas, and you can route those busses to other busses as you please. I use Vegas to mix down my samples (when I'm not time-bound.) I can then put all the strings to a string bus, all the music to a music bus, all the dialog to a dialog bus and so on. You can then easily apply unique EQs to each step, and compress instruments/voices alone or in combination. You can also draw envelopes on each track and each bus, controlling volume or pan, and even automating any parameter on your effects. For instance, you can modulate a resonant filter for a spacey sound, or add increasing reverb as the actor speaks and walks out of the room.

Unless money is really tight, I'd get the full version. It's not just a great NLE, but a great DAW (except that it has no MIDI) as well.

ACID Pro 6 has the above mixing capabilities and includes MIDI, but no video editing. The MIDI implementation isn't anything to write home about though, and the tempo control is limited. Hence, I use Sonar for MIDI and Vegas for video editing and tracking/mixing.

[Thomas J]

Again, thanks for everybody's input. I'm just getting involved in this and have a couple of very basic questions.

What is the best way to get my 8mm Video Cassette tapes into my computer's hard drive? Do I first get them to DVD then to my computer? Or can I record from my video cam directly to computer?

If the DVD first option is better, should I look at getting a stand-alone DVD recorder or use my DVD record option on my VCR (which I've read might render very poor quality reproduction.)

Thanks,

Tom

[Reegs]

Don't go from DVD. Buy a capture device that lets you hook in the RCA connections (some graphics cards come with them). You will then be able to record the 8mm to digital, uncompressed video (BIG!), which you can then edit without loss of quality and finally compress to DVD, QT, or whatever.


Check here: http://dvr.about.com/od/tvcapturemethods/ht/ht1.htm

And here: http://www.bizrate.com/videoeditingcapturecards/products__keyword--video+capture+device.html

[Thomas J]

Thanks, Reeg. Sounds like the perfect solution.

[howardv]

I've had good success capturing tapes with a Canopus ADVC-300 which goes for around $500. It connects to the computer with firewire and does a nice job stabalizing tapes via either composite or svhs inputs. I also 2nd Jon's comments about Vegas. Suggest you also hunt down and master ffmpeg for all those odd-ball conversion chores.

Howard

[JonFairhurst]

I haven't used it, but you might look into Datavideo's DAC 100 product. It looks to cost about $100 new.

http://www.datavideo.us/products/dac_100_main_page.htm

This will convert analog to DV over firewire (1394), which is what you would use to capture the content. It also converts firewire to analog, so you can connect your computer to a TV when editing. Hopefully, your PC already has a Firewire/iLink/IEEE-1394 port. Otherwise, you'll need to buy a 1394 card as well.

I wouldn't recommend a USB card for video capture. 1394 supports "isochronous" connections, which guarantees bandwidth. With USB, you're never sure about the bandwidth. You might need to perform some optimizations on your PC to ensure a clean capture, even with Firewire. Note that almost all DV cams have Firewire rather than USB ports. There are good reasons for this. The buffers are small. If the transfer stalls for even a moment, you get dropped frames.

Datavideo makes products for the low-end of the pro market. They're no Snell & Wilcox, but I would trust them to make a decent analog converter for consumer use.

[Steve_Karl]

Thanks!

100% of the video editing is done with Vegas. We use Particle Illusion for some of the effects. (An awesome value.) We do the final encode with Sorenson Squeeze and the On2 coder. We give the audio 128 kbps, and the video gets 280 kbps.

The edits are all done in standard definition (720x480) and the final product is 480x270 widescreen.

Probably more than you wanted to know...



No. Never. I love the techno stuff.

The "Sorenson Squeeze" is what is getting it to be so easily streamable and maintain quality?











BTW, I found Vegas 6 for $99 on B&H's site. It's as powerful as Adobe and Apple's stuff (with some esoteric exceptions), it's completely stable, and it's easy to use.

As an example of its stability, we edited the entire 48-hour film project video on Vegas without a single crash or hiccup. Same thing with the audio recording. No crashes or problems during a weekend when virtually nobody slept.

We will post our musical on August 27th...

[JonFairhurst]

The "Sorenson Squeeze" is what is getting it to be so easily streamable and maintain quality?Yep. They licensed the VP6 coder from On2, as did Adobe Flash. At the time, Sorenson's coding app was more tweakable than the On2 coding app. That might have changed by now. I'd take a serious look at On2's Flix product, if I were shopping today. http://on2.com/products/flix/

The ease of streaming is due to Flash. We use "progressive download." The Flash plugin just downloads it to the hard drive and caches the content. Flash is smart enough to play the partial file as it loads.

YouTube uses the same basic technology (Flash & VP6), but they compress the heck out of it. They store and stream a bit more than we do though. ;)

[marce]

Anyone use Magix Movie maker? what about it?

[rbowser-]

Marce, I haven't tried Magix, but your question reminded me that I wanted to point out how trial demos are available of these various programs. I chose Premiere (Elements) when it won hands-down amongst the various demos I tried. Naturally, going through demos is the way to find out if a certain software's approach appeals to us.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[marce]

Thanks your answer Randy. The good thing about the Magix proggie is that it is downloable, shipping for me is an issue. It use something called "iPace", but im not sure if it is some kind of software dongle, i heard not good thing about that.

[David Guinness]

Hi all,

If I remember correctly, several years ago I saw something like a USB VHS Player... It was about the size of a regular drive, just large enough to slide in a VHS tape, and the only connector was USB2, which plugged into a PC to allow for playback, capture, and possibly analog recording. I think the model I saw was an opaque blue. Anyway, I've looked around and I can't find what I'm talking about. I would assume because of its size and the type of connection, that it wouldn't have worked very well anyway...

Does anyone else remember having ever seen one of these?

[Styxx]

Adobe Soundbooth CS3


I ran into this the other week. It's new as far as I can gather. Sorry I don't have the link to post but google it and I'm sure it will pop up.

[JonFairhurst]

Adobe Soundbooth CS3


I ran into this the other week. It's new as far as I can gather. Sorry I don't have the link to post but google it and I'm sure it will pop up.
Here it is:

http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth/

Functionally, it's equivalent to Sound Forge. It's a single track audio editor. It doesn't include video editing, It also has some features for matching a canned score to picture.

[JonFairhurst]

Regarding Vegas+DVD with respect to Premiere Pro, there was recently a fairly high-profile defection.

The guy who made this beautiful HD movie (http://www.pinelakefilms.com/snoqualmie.html) has moved to Vegas after years on Premiere.

You can read his analysis here (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101543).

I'm sure that there are others who have gone the other way. My point isn't that Premiere Pro is bad. (It's not.) My point is that Vegas stacks up with the top NLEs.

[efiebke]

Yep. . .

I also want to share that I think that Vegas is a great video editing program. For me, it's "intuitive", rarely crashes and meets my simple video editing needs.

I enjoyed watching that video, by the way. The video work and the music are quite beautiful. Also, the DV Info (http://www.dvinfo.net) is a great source of information and support for almost any video editing needs. Been a ("lurking") member there for a long time. Learned a lot about video editing there.

Ted

[Steve_Karl]

Here's a project done (as far as I know)totally with open source free software.

The Youtube version is pretty good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsGEWHNJ3s8

....but it's definaltely way more impressive to download the whole thing
and see it in at least it's 720 x 480 size.
It's also available in HD.
http://www.elephantsdream.org/

You might have to try a few different links to get a good connection for the download.
I think Germany worked for me.

[David Guinness]

Elephant's Dream is amazing. I mean, the plot is bizarre, but the animation and texturing is outstanding. I've been a fan of Blender for a long time.

However, unless you have twenty to thirty monster machines to dedicate to a project like that, it's not going to happen.

[Steve_Karl]

Elephant's Dream is amazing. I mean, the plot is bizarre, but the animation and texturing is outstanding. I've been a fan of Blender for a long time.

However, unless you have twenty to thirty monster machines to dedicate to a project like that, it's not going to happen.

Probably a lot of the rendering time was caused by the texturing, lighting motion blur etc. but I think their intention was to go for the most impressive look that they could muster.

Even still, a 30 minute anim. with less eye candy is definately doable with even 1 decent machine.

[dermod]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Windows Movie Maker which lies there free in any pc with XP SP2. Perhaps its the dreaded Gates word that puts people off. WMM may be quite basic, but it stitches together your clips very smoothly with a range of transition effects and lets you add your own sounds. I have used GPO files with it. If the need is simply to transfer VHS to disks with some added slicker editing, video editing software doesn't come much cheaper than free. At the very least, using it will give you a clearer idea of what you would like in a smarter program.

[Thomas J]

Regarding Vegas+DVD with respect to Premiere Pro, there was recently a fairly high-profile defection.

The guy who made this beautiful HD movie has moved to Vegas after years on Premiere.


Jon:

This is an incredibly beautiful video clip. Do you know if the music was GPO?

[JonFairhurst]

This is an incredibly beautiful video clip. Do you know if the music was GPO?It doesn't sound like GPO to my ears - certainly, the piano is not. If it is GPO, it is exquisitely performed.

(I notice that various libs have signature sounds when sequenced poorly. When sequenced well, they sound less like the samples and more like the performer.

Same for GPO. The lib is easy to identify with a thin orchestration and little use of the mod wheel. When orchestrated and played to the fullest, it can sound magical - like the above film!)