Video Editing Software

[andy]

Originally Posted by Kyle Fenton

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