Best Editing Software For LONG Form Videos

[tvradioguy]

Hi all, I am new to this forum - I was wondering if there is a really good editing program for long form videos? I shoot a lot of church services and events and sometimes the videos can be 40 mins-to an hour in length. I am shooting in HD1080 and with multiple cams. Can someone direct me to a program that can handle this? I am using a PC (very new, with 2gb of video RAM, 12GB RAM, and Intel core I7. I have good specs on my computer, I suspect the editing program I am using just can't handle what I am putting into it. I am currently using Pinnacle 17 ultimate and it stalls and loses sync often with long form vids. Short form no problems. Thanks for any advice!

[newpball]

I would recommend a professional NLE such as Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer.

For HD I would recommend a minimum of 16GB of memory and preferably 32GB (and yes you can benefit from 32GB if you edit HD video files from multiple cams).

[poisondeathray]

What kind of cameras ? Another possibility - It's common during multicamera shoots to experience sync drift for longer shoots, unless they are genlocked to a common TC source, because each piece of hardware runs at slightly different internal clock

[tvradioguy]

using 3 Panasonic HDC-TM900 cams.

[poisondeathray]

Well if it's still impossible to fix (or very difficult manually), despite trying other software - then you have a good suspicion that it's drift. You basically need genlock for a multicam shoot, especially longer shoots that are a few hours. No "consumer" camera model with have genlock

[newpball]

Well if it's still impossible to fix (or very difficult manually), despite trying other software - then you have a good suspicion that it's drift. You basically need genlock for a multicam shoot, especially longer shoots that are a few hours. No "consumer" camera model with have genlock

Really what is the problem?

Just resync the videos every so many times, I cannot imagine this becoming a big problem for videos from 40 minutes to an hour.
It's not that all cameras are shown all the time in the final video anyway.

[poisondeathray]

Well if it's still impossible to fix (or very difficult manually), despite trying other software - then you have a good suspicion that it's drift. You basically need genlock for a multicam shoot, especially longer shoots that are a few hours. No "consumer" camera model with have genlock

Really what is the problem?

Just resync the videos every so many times, I cannot imagine this becoming a big problem for videos from 40 minutes to an hour.
It's not that all cameras are shown all the time in the final video anyway.

You're right, it's usually not a huge problem for short recordings. But the longer the recording , the bigger the problem. I don't know about you, but I hate syncing video. I just want it to work without hassle. That's the problem.

[smrpix]

While genlock is ideal, I've had no problems with sync drift with multiple consumer-grade Sony and JVC camcorders for recordings over two hours (plus some 20-min-at-a-time DSLR takes.) My bet is the NLE is just having trouble decoding multiple streams of avc/h.264 video simultaneously and the issue is occurring at playback.

If you use Avid or Premiere (I use both, prefer Avid) transcode to a lightweight iframe proxy codec, create a multicam sequence, make your edits, flatten/commit your multicam, and then relink to your originals for color correction and final output. Fastest, most efficient way.

[poisondeathray]

My bet is the NLE is just having trouble decoding multiple streams of avc/h.264 video simultaneously and the issue is occurring at playback.

If decoding was an issue, you would expect decoding multiple streams to be an issue for both longer and shorter shoots, not just a problem on longer ones

[smrpix]

My bet is the NLE is just having trouble decoding multiple streams of avc/h.264 video simultaneously and the issue is occurring at playback.

If decoding was an issue, you would expect decoding multiple streams to be an issue for both longer and shorter shoots, not just a problem on longer ones

Not necessarily. Longer takes, especially if folks merge spanned clips together into single clips instead of loading properly from the file structure of the SD card, tend to really gum up the works. I've learned this the hard way. Breaking longer files down into, say 10 minute segments, even with identical encoding makes it run smoother.

That's my observation. I can make educated guess about how Avid and Premiere load up files and allocate memory and resources, but they would just be guesses.

[poisondeathray]

My bet is the NLE is just having trouble decoding multiple streams of avc/h.264 video simultaneously and the issue is occurring at playback.

If decoding was an issue, you would expect decoding multiple streams to be an issue for both longer and shorter shoots, not just a problem on longer ones

Not necessarily. Longer takes, especially if folks merge spanned clips together into single clips instead of loading properly from the file structure of the SD card, tend to really gum up the works.

True. But you can usually tell right away, because glitches (audio or video), or problems usually occur right between the clip boundaries

I hope it's not a drift issue for him, it's tedious work



Anyways, tvradioguy - give other software a try (some of them have free trials), make sure you import the entire folder structure from the cards (there is metadata required for stitching between filespanned clips)

[tvradioguy]

All great advice ya'll! Thank you for the info and insight from Pros. Much appreciated!

[suelaine]

I have a PC with Intel i7 and 8 GB Ram. I do fairly long videos including year long compilations of family events and I find that Corel x6 works far better than Pinnacle 17 with my system. I like the features and somewhat cheesy effects included with Pinnacle but I have given up using it because it just does not work well with my system and HD video editing. On the other hand, I rarely have any problems with Corel.