Video editor software?

[James_0555]

There's some really nicely done videos from some of you... I'm

wondering what software you use to convert the raw footage into

something better and with added music?

I can't afford anything hugely fancy and expensive, just something to

cut bits, add transitions and suchlike, and put some good tunes in

there.

Thanks in advance!

James.

[jozza]

If you are using Windows XP, then Windows Movie Maker is a good starting point, and it's a free download. Otherwise, there are a few different packages, I've used Pinnacle Studio, Ulead Video Studio and Adobe Premiere Elements. The first 2 are great for beginners, but Premier is a bit more powerful if a little harder to get used to. All of these are are great for producing small video features. You can download trial versions, which gives you plenty of time to test them out and pick the one you prefer, and the cost of them is pretty reasonable.

[scoobs]

If you had a Mac, your ideal software would be iMovie, which comes free on new recent Macs and is ideal for novice users while still letting them do some cool looking stuff.

It makes Windows movie Maker look like... well, a piece of cr*p Microsoft software...

[richytanimal]

I use Windows movie maker for making my vids, as scoobs says it is not very good, but it's free and it does the job. It only has the basic editing tools and wipes etc but with a bit of effort you can do a nice job.[]

Rich.

[James_0555]

I use Windows movie maker for making my

vids, as scoobs says it is not very good, but it's free and it does the

job. It only has the basic editing tools and wipes etc but with a bit

of effort you can do a nice job.[]

Rich.

Well your vids like what I'm aiming at so that's great, how long does it usually take you...?

[richytanimal]

Normally takes me about 3 or 4 hours to make about a 3 or 4 minute video! Mind you that includes taking it from the camcorder into the pc and doing all the little fancy bits like trying to sync the action with the music (which can be a real pain when you get one bit wrong and it puts the whole lot out!!)

Cheers.

Rich.

[scoobs]

Mine take anything from a couple of days to about a week (on and off) depending on what I want to do. I usually spend a couple of hours reviewing the footage, marking scenes and capturing the better stuff, then thinking about what I'm going to do (sometimes I'll already know this before shooting footage, other times I just want to make some sense of whatever footage i got), how to structure it, what music to use and so on.

(Choosing the music often takes a few days to finalise, I find it mostly quite tricky. The trick is to get stylistically appropriate music that has a certain amount of dynamics in it that you can cut to, to create sections and keep up the interest. For example, the music may start off slow, and to that you have slow fades and black and white slowmo footage, and then the music kicks in, when you can switch to colour, quick edits and so on.)

Then I usually come back the next day and start pulling things into shape, in order to get a quick rough cut all the way through.

If there's anything that needs heavy work, shots that need stuff painted out, or anything tricky like rotoscoping, I'll tackle that stuff here.

Then I'll go back and refine edits, try out some more arty stuff, do rough colour correcting, and deinterlacing all the footage.

Once the edit is complete, I'll then look at titling, motion graphics, or any extra stuff that needs creating.

Once that's done, the movie is rendered out at full res, high quality web and lo quality web sizes, uploaded to webspace, thumbnails done, and then the TC movie entry made.

What I tend to do is use these little movies as a learning experience, I usually try stuff out, tackle something in a new way, or try and replicate something cool I'd seen on TV or something. If I just wanted to edit some footage together quickly and bung a soundtrack on you can do it in half an hour.

The best thing is to grab your software of choice, and get started - the more you do, the better/quicker you get. And of course, it's fun!

[Matt2000]

i use pinnacle studio 9 to make my movies. i got the trial with an analogue convertor, and loved it so much i had to buy it. it allows me to do so much more than MM, but still isn't perfect. i usually spend an afternoon making a movie. as far as music is concerned, i just use what i have, and try to make it fit.

with a bit of luck, i might get a miniDV cam to make things easier.

[Petrolhead]

I also use Pinnacle. Started off with Pinaccle Studio 7, but had loads of problems with that so bought Studio 8. Had problems again with that, so we bought Studio 9. That's what I use to make most of my videos on TC.

It has got a good range of transitions/titles and the likes. But, even though you have to pay for the thing in the first place, if you want to get some more effects you've got to pay for them aswell! We recently bought the unlock of Mpeg-4 encoding, which cost £8, and it didn't even work. To unlock all of the effects and other options you could end up spending an awful lot! However, it does come with a couple of effects and all of the transitions and titles, and I don't find myself needing all the mega-fancy affects most of the time, so I find it quite good!

But, I think in your case that Windows Movie Maker is a good start. I tried it and didn't find it too bad!