Help choosing a new NLE

[adam]

A friend of mine might be in the market for a new non-linear editor and she wants my help in choosing one, but my experience is limited to Adobe Premiere which is more than she needs.

First off, she says she has some editor made by Dazzle which she likes but she lost the activation code and they will not provide her with a replacement since they no longer service that product? Does that sound right? Anyway they recommended she buy Studio 9.

She wants something very quick and easy for importing and editing DV footage. She would also like an easy interphase for burning the project onto DVD, preferably an all-in-one software package. She is hoping not to spend more than $100.

Anyone have any suggestions? Maybe Ulead makes something, or is Studio 9 a good option? I will probably have to teach her how to use it so the simpler it is to use the better.

Thanks

[Ziffelpig]

Honestech Video Editor 6

Product Features
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Drag and Drop makes adding/moving of videos into and within HT Video Editor easy.
You can use drag-and-drop to put editing frames from the Source Collection area directly into Storyboard or Timeline.
DV-AVI video clips can be transferred to a digital camcorder. Note: AVI files need to be converted to DV-AVI first.
Supported file formats include:
MPEG-1 (VCD)
MPEG-2 (SVCD, DVD)
WMV (Window Media Format)
DV- AVI
AVI
Note: To compress AVI to DV-AVI, the appropriate CODEC needs to be installed on the PC.
Cut and Merge feature makes merging of videos much easier.
Cut and Merge: Used for simple merging of streaming video.
Transition Merge: Merges screen transitions to existing video file.
Streaming Video Merge Method:
Fast MPEG merge(GOP boundary cut)
Editing by GOP(Group Of Picture) frame units.
The "Fast" method of editing and saving requires no additional encoding.
Applies when two or more files being edited have identical MPEG formats.
The "Properties" of the "saved" file inherit the "Properties" of the original file.
Applies only to the merging of identical MPEG video files.
Smart Rendering
Only re-encodes the edited part of a video, not the entire video.
Property setting changes can be made to specific clips of video frames.
Full Rendering
Customizable: editing can occur on a frame-by-frame basis.
Flexible:
Will render together video files with differing video formats.
Output files can be the same or different from either of the original video files.
The output video format can be selected after editing (titling, audio, special and transition effects) are applied.
Slower: re-encodes all the video frames making it a slower method of editing and saving.
Title editing
Title editing allows users to add titles to existing video clips.
Titles can play across a straight line or curved line.
Titles can be applied to an entire video or to clips within a video.
Special effect
Special Effect a variety of special effects (filters) can be added to videos.
There are three types of filters: color, effect, and transition.
Even novices can master the special effects and create great looking videos.
With the newly-added Overlay function, you can create various effects.
The Overlay function is similar to the picture-within-a-picture feature seen in many TV sets, and allows you to display two clips on a single screen.
Now you can produce or edit high quality videos with ease - even from your own home computer.
The newly-added Timeline feature makes it much more easy to perform editing tasks.
All the main editing operations can be performed using mouse drag and drop, making your editing tasks incredibly simple .
You can zoom in or out of Timeline for project overview and precise editing.
You can transmit the video clips capturing your valuable memories with camcorder to PC and keep them in digital format for long time.
You can import and record video clips from PC camera, TV (TV tuner) and camcorder.
You can make a disk in video format such as NTSC and PAL, as well as DVD, VCD, SVCD, and miniDVD.

[The village idiot]

EditStudio and mpegXS encoder

[teegee420]

she says she has some editor made by Dazzle which she likes but she lost the activation code and they will not provide her with a replacement since they no longer service that product? Does that sound right?

Perhaps another code could be "found". Aside from that, I'm a big Honestech Video Editor fan as well. Used Ulead Video Studio before and I haven't looked back.