Video Editing Software
fmueller
Auckland, NZ Icrontian
I recently got myself a Canon Rebel T1i (500D). The thing shoots video that gets stored on an SD card as mov file. I am looking for a software to use to edit these files - mostly to cut scenes out so I can just keep the good stuff. Freeware would be preferable :bigggrin:
As an aside, I don't expect using the video function a lot. So a simple, user friendly software without unnecessary bells and whistles would be perfect. For stills I use PS to edit them. I have access to Adobe CS2 via my wife, but I don't think it offers much regarding video editing.
Many thanks
Frank
PS: Initial unedited test video here.
As an aside, I don't expect using the video function a lot. So a simple, user friendly software without unnecessary bells and whistles would be perfect. For stills I use PS to edit them. I have access to Adobe CS2 via my wife, but I don't think it offers much regarding video editing.
Many thanks
Frank
PS: Initial unedited test video here.
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Comments
For video editing, I came across Avidemux last night, and like it ok. Editing mov files is a breeze, but once I save the edited video, I can no longer open it on any player including VLC player, which usually plays everything. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Posted in the Avidemux forum, but so far no luck
Frank
That's on my laptop running Vista. My desktop has more RAM and generally more umpf, but runs XP. Windows Movie Maker for XP can't open mov files using the H.264 codec, which is what my camera produces.
I have been using Premiere Elements for a while now and have been pleasantly surprised at how full-featured it is. It's only $99.
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Before you buy Premiere have a look at Jahshaka. It is very similar to Premier and is open source. I had a little play a while back and it is very good too. If you don't like it or it doesn't work on your system then try premier.
I've done a frickload of editing with highend tools and I go back and forth between Avid and Final Cut Studio. Avid's nice but EXTREMELY temperamental and difficult to learn but once you do it's blazing fast at straight up editing. Final Cut Studio's a very solid package all around, I have plenty of complaints but it's the one I would recommend if you had a Mac and wanted to spend that much. I'm deeply, deeply infatuated with Color, it's finicky but I
Another decent option for simple stuff is just to use Quicktime Pro, you won't want to do anything major with it but there's a lot more under the hood then most people get to.
These days I do the majority of my editing in the compositing app Fusion, but I know a lot of people who use After Effects for short edits as well.
If you want to add effects and such then just use After Effects from the CS2 version and you can do video editing as well as FX editing. It just depends on what you want to do. There are plenty of tutorial videos out there to help you get started with any program.
I've tried a number of different video editing programs over the last week or so, and most seem geared towards taking video clips, photos and so on and combining them into a movie while adding titles, special effects and so on. What I want to do is cut video clips to removed the undesired parts. Adding stuff is not important to me - at least not at this point. For example in Premiere, cutting clips is not easy or straightforward to do - or at least I haven't quite worked out how to do it yet. For example if there was a function to remove individual frames, that would be awesome, but is there?
It's easy to forget in hindsight, but I had similar troubles starting with Photoshop to manipulate still images back when I started scanning slides with my Minolta Scan Dual II film scanner. In the early days the software for that scanner was so bad that the colors would come out all wrong, and doing color correction in PS was darn near impossible for me - until I found Dan Margulis' book Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction. How have you folks learned to use Premiere - is there a good online guide or a book somebody can recommend?
I was never planning to get into video the same way I am into still photography. So I though I could save myself some trouble by findign a simpler software, but maybe that's not the way to go.
That's my screen with Premiere Elements, and I can see no razorblade tool - or any other tools for that matter
Actually, Avid is the industry standard still in a lot of markets, it completely dominates the high-end film industry and in broadcast while FCP has become the major player in indie/low budget films and commercials. TV shows are a mix of the two.
Rich, isn't Jahshaka more of a compositing and visual effects tool?
You mean like after effects? It has been ages sinse i played with it but im sure I used it as video editing package. I may be wrong though
Installed it as soon as you posted the first time. Was worried it might not be able to open files from the T1i, because Jashaka 2.0 seems quite old (2006), and the 3.0 versions seems to be much anticipated but so far elusive. To my surprise, Jashaka 2.0 opened my file just fine, and even plays the movie. So far so good.
The catch is, for the life of me I cannot work out how to cut or trim a video clip with Jashaka. There is a help button, but nothing happens when you click on it, and otherwise documentation about the program seems non existent.
What I love about Jashaka is the mode where you get all the frames side-by-side and can scan through them by pulling the 'film-strip' across the screen with the mouse. Now if I could work out how to delete frames in that mode, I'd be happy!
:sad2::sad2::sad2:
I am very surprised that what I am looking for seems such an unusual feature. But apparently nobody else wants to remove frames from clips. Does everybody just stitch stuff together to create their movies
Oh, another problem I have with Elements is that it seems very bloated. The only way I can work with this program in on my desktop, but I have recently taken a liking to working on my laptop, but it takes forever and a day for Elements to even start on that thing - let alone do anything. I hardly notice a difference when working with Photoshop on either machine, so I am surprised that Elements slows down the laptop so much.
Yes. This is how video editing is done. One once had to edit video with a razor-blade and some tape, and modern tools use visual representations of that process.
You just need to slice the video on either side of the frames you want to remove, then delete those frames, and drag the pieces together again.
You might find a program out there that has fewer of the features you don't need, but you won't find a program that does what you want to do any better (or any more like you want) than Premier.
Video editing is not a light task. Honestly, it only became tolerable when I moved to quad core and 4gb of ram. Once I got 8gb of ram, things got a lot better, and when I upgraded to a high end video card, it became a joy.
That's one of the reasons I spec'ed out the Ultimate HTPC so high - you can edit home videos on that box.
Many thanks to all of you for your help!