Video Editing Software

[SteveC116]

I have a bunch of questions:

What have you used in the past aside from MAX to make the final animation? Are there any Open Source video editing programs out there?
How is Windows Movie Maker
Should I try to get my hands on a Mac to use iMovie?

[dragonpaulz]

I use adobe premiere and after effects.

[Ragin_Kage]

Should I try to get my hands on a Mac to use iMovie?

I have had pretty good results with iMovie, pretty easy to use and everything, id say if you could get your hands on a mac, do use it!

(side note for anyone wanting to upgrade to an iPod mini...yeah, dont do it yet unless you have extra money to blow, they will drop the price eventually, get it then, plus u dont get the cool touch buttons :yikes: )

[andy]

I use and am fluent in

-imovie
-Final Cut Pro 1,2,3
-Avid Symphony and DV Express
-Adobe Premire 5,6, Pro
-Adobe After Effects 5,6
-Casablanca

If I had to reccomend a good starting program that is easy to learn and easy to step up to the "big boys" editing programs, I would choose Premire. It has alot of the features and controls usually found only in Avid and Final Cut. However it is easier to use and learn the the professional programs. Though once you use Premire you can easily switch to other programs (ex. Avid and Final Cut).

I would avoid mac programs like the plague because if you are a PC person you will hate them. Also the computing power needed to render video often is not found in any macs except for the G4 of G5 power macs. These are usually in the 3-5 thousand dollar range. For that kind of money you could easily buy several PCs and network render (really fast rendering) or you could use Avid (no rendering. correction: real time rendering)

Good luck!

If you have any questions I would be happy to help out if I can
-Andy

[dragonpaulz]

good call

[Duke 13370]

Is any of that software free?

[dragonpaulz]

unfortunatelt, no.

If your using linux you could probably find some os software on sourceforge or something.

[dragonpaulz]

Here's one:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jahshakafx/

[Joe Matt]

I use and am fluent in

-imovie
-Final Cut Pro 1,2,3
-Avid Symphony and DV Express
-Adobe Premire 5,6, Pro
-Adobe After Effects 5,6
-Casablanca

If I had to reccomend a good starting program that is easy to learn and easy to step up to the "big boys" editing programs, I would choose Premire. It has alot of the features and controls usually found only in Avid and Final Cut. However it is easier to use and learn the the professional programs. Though once you use Premire you can easily switch to other programs (ex. Avid and Final Cut).

I would avoid mac programs like the plague because if you are a PC person you will hate them. Also the computing power needed to render video often is not found in any macs except for the G4 of G5 power macs. These are usually in the 3-5 thousand dollar range. For that kind of money you could easily buy several PCs and network render (really fast rendering) or you could use Avid (no rendering. correction: real time rendering)

Good luck!

If you have any questions I would be happy to help out if I can
-Andy
Those figures are off by a long shot. You can get a G5, dual 2ghz, for under $2000. Now you can get a nice G4 for under $900.

[Kyle Fenton]

I use and am fluent in

-imovie
-Final Cut Pro 1,2,3
-Avid Symphony and DV Express
-Adobe Premire 5,6, Pro
-Adobe After Effects 5,6
-Casablanca

If I had to reccomend a good starting program that is easy to learn and easy to step up to the "big boys" editing programs, I would choose Premire. It has alot of the features and controls usually found only in Avid and Final Cut. However it is easier to use and learn the the professional programs. Though once you use Premire you can easily switch to other programs (ex. Avid and Final Cut).

I would avoid mac programs like the plague because if you are a PC person you will hate them. Also the computing power needed to render video often is not found in any macs except for the G4 of G5 power macs. These are usually in the 3-5 thousand dollar range. For that kind of money you could easily buy several PCs and network render (really fast rendering) or you could use Avid (no rendering. correction: real time rendering)

Good luck!

If you have any questions I would be happy to help out if I can
-Andy

I have to disagree with you on this. The G5 starts at $1,600 for students and goes up to $2,600. G4 go from the sub 1,000 range all the way to a $2,000 20 inch imac. You would probably will want to add some RAM (Usually serious video editors have 2 gigs +), with the G5 you can have up to 8 gigs of memory (only 4 with the low end). They are very competitive and often better than the wintel side of things.

iMovie is a great application for beginners and it is part of the iLife package now ($30)

Final Cut Express is on par, and most of the times better than Premiere, Avid DV express, and more. It is available for $150

Final Cut Pro competes with $50,000 systems and software packages, and its $500.

Final Cut Pro is quickly becoming the new standard in video editing, and there are several articles that can state that.

I have used Premier, and didn't really like the user interface of it, and it was usually very slow compared to Final Cut Express.

For a free movie editor on the wintel side,there is a piece of software that avid makes. It doesn't offer much, but its good enough for most projects.

http://www.avid.com/freedv/

[Tom Bottiglieri]

i know adobe has a 30 day trial of premiere on their site, so u can check that out. ive been using it for a couple years and ive never run into any problems

[Gabriel]

I've played around enough with video production to know that I'm really terrible at it, but I have to say that iMovie is simple to learn and very fun and will give you some great results. I've used premeire (a little) and Windows Movie Maker and absolutely despised them. Avid DV Express and Final Cut Pro are very powerful, you can do anything with them, but they're a big step up in complexity and at least for me, very difficult to learn. I guess it depends on what you're trying to do, if you want a system that's simple to learn and relatively powerful get hold of a Mac and use iMovie. The newest version is coming out in a few days.

[Aaron Knight]

Just remember that you can use older versions of iMovie on the old CRT iMacs - which you can pick up pretty cheaply.

You can also pick up an eMac G4 for around $6-700 with the academic discounts. You can even pick up the 1Ghz eMac with the DVD burner for around the $1000 mark.

iMovie comes preinstalled on all new macs, and the academic price to buy the new version is only $29 if you don't have it.

You can even get it to run on a pre-G3 Mac, albeit very painfully :)

What you really need to worry about for video is having plenty of hard drive space available. Raw unedited DV footage is somewhere in the vicinity of 1GB/min.

Good luck!

[matt111]

Using A Mac Lol Rofl If U Want One There Are Two Sitting In The Corner Of My Basement...mac=bad

[andy]

I have to disagree with you on this. The G5 starts at $1,600 for students and goes up to $2,600. G4 go from the sub 1,000 range all the way to a $2,000 20 inch imac. You would probably will want to add some RAM (Usually serious video editors have 2 gigs +), with the G5 you can have up to 8 gigs of memory (only 4 with the low end). They are very competitive and often better than the wintel side of things.

iMovie is a great application for beginners and it is part of the iLife package now ($30)

Final Cut Express is on par, and most of the times better than Premiere, Avid DV express, and more. It is available for $150

Final Cut Pro competes with $50,000 systems and software packages, and its $500.

Final Cut Pro is quickly becoming the new standard in video editing, and there are several articles that can state that.

I have used Premier, and didn't really like the user interface of it, and it was usually very slow compared to Final Cut Express.

For a free movie editor on the wintel side,there is a piece of software that avid makes. It doesn't offer much, but its good enough for most projects.

http://www.avid.com/freedv/

In the for what its worth catagory,
Avid is the industry standard.

I learned imovie first, then casablanca (I hate that machine), then I tried to run Final Cut 1 on a new (now old) imac. Poor choice. Imagine having to render something and the status bar says "render time: about three days"

This is when my dislike for macs began. Also, if you edit/use a mac for AV stuff, example FCP or Photoshop (this is coming from a PC user) BUY A THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!! Using all three buttons is so much quicker then using just one! Or you could get a tablet :) I want one sooo bad!

I digress...

Then I moved on to Premire and After Effects which I used for about 2 years and now I use Avid DV Express. Super nice!

Avid has real time rendering so there's no waiting for effects to be applied. This makes Avid the most powerful video editing program on the market (in my opinion) however it is also the most costly. *sigh*

Good luck this year

[Gabriel]

Using A Mac Lol Rofl If U Want One There Are Two Sitting In The Corner Of My Basement...mac=bad

I'll take 'em. I'm not a windows-hating zealot but I love my Mac.

[SteveC116]

Well our team has an old G3 sitting unused in the corner of the shop. I guess I could try to get iMovie running on it. I'm not sure I will be able to get Premire. Maybe if the school has a copy I will, but if they don't I doubt that the team would get it for our group since it is expensive - and I don't want to get it illegitimately.

[Bduggan04]

I've heard that the new Premiere pro is really good, but premiere six is still above average. I've used old versions of avid cinema and hated it, but I haven't used more recent versions of Avid products. Windows movie maker is terribly simple and limited and not worth using unless you have no other options. As for iMovie, I dislike it as well. The transitions are its only saving quality. After four years of OSMTech, I have developed a hatred for all things mac and found that PC users really feel their programs are annoying to work in. I'd like to try some of discreet's high level software as well as Final Cut Pro.

[Gabriel]

Well our team has an old G3 sitting unused in the corner of the shop. I guess I could try to get iMovie running on it. I'm not sure I will be able to get Premire. Maybe if the school has a copy I will, but if they don't I doubt that the team would get it for our group since it is expensive - and I don't want to get it illegitimately.

You'll probably not be happy with iMovie's performance on an old G3.

[SteveC116]

Alright. I'm going to look into seeing if anyone at the school has Premier and if we could use it for our animation.

[Kyle Fenton]

In the for what its worth catagory,
Avid is the industry standard.

I learned imovie first, then casablanca (I hate that machine), then I tried to run Final Cut 1 on a new (now old) imac. Poor choice. Imagine having to render something and the status bar says "render time: about three days"

This is when my dislike for macs began. Also, if you edit/use a mac for AV stuff, example FCP or Photoshop (this is coming from a PC user) BUY A THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!! Using all three buttons is so much quicker then using just one! Or you could get a tablet :) I want one sooo bad!

I digress...

Then I moved on to Premire and After Effects which I used for about 2 years and now I use Avid DV Express. Super nice!

Avid has real time rendering so there's no waiting for effects to be applied. This makes Avid the most powerful video editing program on the market (in my opinion) however it is also the most costly. *sigh*

Good luck this year

There really isn't any industry standard per se in video editing field. I have seen people use multiple types of non-linear editors. Avid and FCP are very widely use.

FCP has really evolved from the first version, and there a lot more features in version 4, than in version 1. Also FCP is not meant to be on a pro mac, not a consumer mac. So you are obviously going to get poor performance on a consumer type mac. In FCP 4, a lot of the rending stuff is real time or close to real time on a high-end g4 or a g5.

[Kyle Fenton]

Alright. I'm going to look into seeing if anyone at the school has Premier and if we could use it for our animation.

Another option worth considering might be Quicktime Pro. Doesn't have any transtitions, or fancy stuff, but it gets the job done.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Premiere is awesome, the thing I love about it is you can export movies as a filmstrip and import that into photoshop, then edit your movie in photoshop and put it back into premiere. Great for effects.

[djcapelis]

Other than jashaka, there are several other really nice open-source video editing tools:

virtualdub, cinelerra, filmgimp

I have used the first two personally and the 3rd is more for touch up and really advanced stuff... studios use it for basically doing special effects manually.

It's the wonderful image editor, the GIMP, modified to operate with video.

Cinelerra runs only with linux and has a bit of an attitude problem sometimes. VirtualDub is great but is limited and doesn't have the interface you might be expecting... (it's still absolutely wonderful however) And runs on windows only... (drat it, ah well... what's wine for!)

[falconmaster]

I have a bunch of questions:

What have you used in the past aside from MAX to make the final animation? Are there any Open Source video editing programs out there?
How is Windows Movie Maker
Should I try to get my hands on a Mac to use iMovie?

Try Sonic Foundry's Video Factor, Easy to use and professional results, not too expensive either. Sonic Foundry just got bought out don't remember the new name though, but try out their website www.sonicfoundry.com

[andy]

There really isn't any industry standard per se in video editing field. I have seen people use multiple types of non-linear editors. Avid and FCP are very widely use.

FCP has really evolved from the first version, and there a lot more features in version 4, than in version 1. Also FCP is not meant to be on a pro mac, not a consumer mac. So you are obviously going to get poor performance on a consumer type mac. In FCP 4, a lot of the rending stuff is real time or close to real time on a high-end g4 or a g5.

True, I heard that FCP 4 is alot like Avid, havn't seen it yet though.
For a long time I used FCP I have used versions 1,2, and 3. I am not dissatified with FCP but dissatified with macs. They are too expensive compared to simalarly equipped PCs. This does not make financial sense to me. Also I am using Premire Pro right now and it is very much better then previous versions. Its almost better then Avid and FCP, my other favorites. And its alot cheaper.

Good luck this year
-Andy

[djcapelis]

Cinelerra is cheaper than all of these.... unless there's a good video editing tool cheaper than free...

Has a few problems, but it's a solid tool if you know how to use it. Nice keyboard based interface if you want too.

[Max Lobovsky]

Other than jashaka, there are several other really nice open-source video editing tools:

virtualdub, cinelerra, filmgimp

I have used the first two personally and the 3rd is more for touch up and really advanced stuff... studios use it for basically doing special effects manually.

It's the wonderful image editor, the GIMP, modified to operate with video.

Cinelerra runs only with linux and has a bit of an attitude problem sometimes. VirtualDub is great but is limited and doesn't have the interface you might be expecting... (it's still absolutely wonderful however) And runs on windows only... (drat it, ah well... what's wine for!)

VirtualDub isn't designed for editing per se. I think it's more useful as the first (i.e. video capture) or last (i.e. encoding program in your workflow). Actually, scratch that, it was designed for editing originally by Avery Lee, but now i think its major use is what i said above. Including for-pay and for-a-lot-of-pay programs, it really is the best for these stages from what i used.

[djcapelis]

I used to use it just for encoding... now I use mencoder... which is even better.

But yes, it's more niche application than really a complete environment, but it can be used as such. :) All depends on the person.

[Nick Mac]

I use windows movie maker for all of the videos i make with friends...its very easy to use. The only real problems I've had with it is the limitation there is on editing. An example is that you will have a little trouble editing out the middle of scenes, it is far easier to edit the middle and end. But i really enjoy using it.