seeking (free) basic video editor for DV AVI

[njitgrad]

I am finally getting around to editing my remaining D8 and MiniDV footage because I have been making significant progress in the past couple of days using VidCoder to convert DV AVI files (edited with Pinnacle 14 I believe it was at the time) to MP4 files for great looking playback on my Samsung HDTV.

My objective is to finish the editing of raw camera footage with a free tool instead of re-installing my out-dated version Pinnacle on my new PC.

My workflow in the past was quite basic....First I would chop up the AVIs dumped directly from the D8/MiniDV tapes into several project files, each corresponding to a particular shooting date. Afterwards, on each project file I would then just simply cut out the boring scenes (razor tool) and add a "page turn" transition between the remaining "interesting" scenes. Next I would add a fade-in/fade-out to the start/end of each project. Finally, I would render the project as an AVI file (which are the files that I am using as inputs to VidCoder today). So in the end if I shot 20 minutes worth of footage at a birthday party, after editing I would end up with about a 5 minute (or less) AVI file with a smooth fade-in from black, page turns between scenes (so it wouldn't be so abrupt), which concluded with a smooth fade to black.

Can anyone offer a suggestion for a free simple editor that will mimic the workflow I described? Thanks.

[smrpix]

Pinnacle 14 was released in 2009. Nothing in DV has changed since then. Go ahead and reinstall, it's far more capable than anything free. Worst case scenario: it will run faster on your new machine.

If you can do the job in less than 15 days, most NLEs have a free trial.

[njitgrad]

Pinnacle 14 was released in 2009. Nothing in DV has changed since then. Go ahead and reinstall, it's far more capable than anything free. Worst case scenario: it will run faster on your new machine.

Okay, thanks will do.

What about for editing video from my Panasonic HDC-TM300 which I purchased in 2009 and have been using ever since? I used to use the Panasonic software to download the AVCHD footage but now that I've recently purchased a 64GB SD card for it, I just manually copy/paste the .mts files from the memory card to a directory on my HD. I want to edit each of those .mts clips, concatenate them as needed, and produce an MP4 (or something that I can run through VidCoder to create MP4s like I do for my DV AVI files). If memory serves, I was attempting this with Pinnacle 14 a few years back and wasn't very successful. It could have been that my PC wasn't powerful enough. This year I built a new system with a Core i7-4770 Haswell Quad-Core 3.4 GHz CPU, 8GB of DDR3 2400, and an Asus GTX660 GDDR5 video card. Maybe this will make a difference.

[smrpix]

Here's a whitepaper that panasonic put out for Pinnacle 12, it shouoldn't be much different for 14:
ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/panasonic/drivers/PBTS/papers/Pinnacle_studio_whitepaper.pdf

You do not want to copy the individual mts files. The folder structure, particularly everything from the "private" folder on down contains important metadata for stitching spanned clips as well as time, date info, etc.

You can copy the private folder and its contents to your hard drive and point to that as your editing source. Editing off the SD cards directly will be slow torture.

[njitgrad]

You do not want to copy the individual mts files. The folder structure, particularly everything from the "private" folder on down contains important metadata for stitching spanned clips as well as time, date info, etc. You can copy the private folder and its contents to your hard drive and point to that as your editing source.

Well, I've only been copying the mts files and its a little too late to change that. Can't I just import them as individual files and drop them into a single timeline which will effectively concatenate them? I really don't have a need for the metadata, time, date info, etc.

[smrpix]

You can, but you risk gaps and sync issues. If none of your clips are longer than a single file you're probably fine. Still, there's no reason not to do it the right way going forward.

[njitgrad]

You can, but you risk gaps and sync issues.

Hopefully that won't be the case

If none of your clips are longer than a single file you're probably fine.

Are you referring to the 4GB FAT32 file size limit?

Still, there's no reason not to do it the right way going forward.

Agreed and thank you for pointing that out as well as the white paper link

[smrpix]

Are you referring to the 4GB FAT32 file size limit?

Not directly. I'm referring to the standards that Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Avid, Adobe, JVC and others agreed to, to work around the 4GB filesize limit