Best Video Editor

[proto-man]

HI. I was wondering what is the best video editor. I was wondering what software would be best for me if i plan to edit video files mpg or avi. I have tried Pinnacle studio and showbiz 2. They are great software, however, i need a software that will allow me to edit single frames. For example, if i could add pictures on a frame or add a new frame to a video. Something like Flash with all the frames and abilty to create things from scratch (like adding rectangles and text) but for a video. I want to put some special effects on the video but i can only do that if i can add frames to a video and start making it from scratch, or duplicate a previous layer and add effects to that. Is there any editor software like Flash expect for a video. Even if there isn't like a drawing toolbox, i need a software that can atleast add pictures on frames. THey should also be able to allow me to make a new frame and add a background color and some text and pictures. i would appreciate any and all help in this matter. Don't worry about the price, i just need good quality and best software.

[thecoalman]

Well best is subjective.... There's three that fit into that category beore the prices get really outrageous.

Ulead Media Studio Pro , Adobe Premiere & Sony Vegas

I'm pretty sure they all have trial offers. Ulead is quite cheap now as it's getting up in age, there should be a new release soon.

If you reall have some cash to spend you may want to consider gettin a harware encoder like a Matrox card or Canopus DV storm. They allow you to do real time editing gretly reducing preview time. They both come with the Adobe suites and don't cost too much more than if you bought the card itself. I've been eyeing both myself for a while now. That is a pretty big investment......

[lordsmurf]

There is no 'best'. There is only what is 'best' for you.

Define what you want to do, how complex you want things to be, how much you are willing to spend and how much effort you are willing to put into this and maybe someone can offer a few suggestions. But even so, there is no 'best'. If there was, all the others would be out of business!

(plagiarized from bugster! )

[dipstick]

Any good NLE in conjunction with a good image editor will easily handle what you want.

My preferances are Premiere and Photoshop, but others will also work. You can even do it for free using s/w like Wax-2 and Gimp.

Accompishing the special effects is not a problem if you can visualize what needs to be done to accomplish it.

[proto-man]

Thanks for the amazingly quick replies.

thecoalman
I will be sure to test those programs.

lordsmurf
By best, i didn't literally mean best. I agree with you (or should i say bugster ) that there is no best. It is all personal preference, especially in video editing) I need to know what are some good products i could start out with. I am willing to spend quite some time and money with this.

dipstick
Yes, I do have Photoshop and am quite familiar with it. As i right to assume that NLE is non linear editor. I don't actually know what linear and non linear are so i guess now would be a good time to ask. Also, about accomplishing the special effects, can u tell me what tools would give me a wide varierty or special effects, like transistions or other effects. Also, what would be good for making some special effetcs myslef .

Thank you all for your replies.

[lordsmurf]

Time + Money = Premiere & Photoshop

Great results.

[thecoalman]

Also, about accomplishing the special effects, can u tell me what tools would give me a wide varierty or special effects, like transistions or other effects. Also, what would be good for making some special effetcs myslef .

All three that I mentioned will come with a wide variety of transitions and affects. They have abilities way beyond Pinnacle as far as editing so creating your own is with images and other techniques is not that hard. Additionally there is also a wide variety of 3rd party plug-ins available for additional features.

One app I have found quite useful for creating stuff outside of my video editor besides my image editor is Ulead Cool 3-D. It creates animated text and graphics. For example I can create a cube and put images or video on each side and manipulate the cube any way I want. It works in conjuction with your graphics card so the shading and effects are pretty good. There's other similar programs.

Check out sample 8: http://www.ulead.com/c3ds/samples.htm

Here's a quick text example (don't laugh) :P :




Real Looking Clouds, you can float objects such as the text or the cube I described above through them.:

http://www.nepadigital.com/temp/clouds.wmv

[dipstick]

Here's a simple effect I made recently using a two-layered psd file:
ring.wmv (690 kb)

[thecoalman]

Here's a simple effect I made recently using a two-layered psd file:
ring.wmv (690 kb)

I get an error trying to play that file, says source filter could not be loaded? Points me to a download page on MS's site.... hmmmmm Anyone else?

BTW mine loads fine. :P

[dipstick]

I used Windows Media 9 codec through VirtualDub.

Edit: You should be able to open it in WMP clasic.

[lordsmurf]

Error here too. Corrupted upload.

[dipstick]

I just downloaded from the link and it worked fine for me. I don't know what the problem might be.

Choose save to disk and try opening it up in Nero or something?

[lordsmurf]

If you right click, save as, and play from PC, it's fine. But the file is still FUBAR. WMP9 says it's not an WMV. Gspot says it is.

Anyway, nice simple effect.

[dipstick]

Oh well, I just did a quick encode of it in virtualdub using the wmv ACM. It's probably not quite up to snuff, but it works well enough.

Hopefully some will see it.

[proto-man]

Those effects are great. I will try out Ulead Cool 3D. Are there any other good programs for some cool effects. I really like effects and want to extend to other software's effects. Is Adobe After Effects good. I am just guessing it might be about effects considering its name. Also, dispstick, what did u do for the ring effects. Which program did u use? What exactly do u mean by two layered psd. One layer for the ring and one for (video?) Video might sound crazy as photoshop is an image editing program.

and sorry for the late replies guys. I was checking out the great software you guys advised me. I appreciate all your help.

[Baldrick]

Works fine with mpc here. Very nice effect! It is fubar cause it has avi header when it is a wmv....wmp doesn't like that.

[thecoalman]

What exactly do u mean by two layered psd. One layer for the ring and one for (video?) Video might sound crazy as photoshop is an image editing program.

All three could create that, you can export images with objects using a format that supports transparent backgrounds. In MSP for example you would export a TGA with the ring with a hole, the other the jewel. Set up a transparency for the jewel with key frames on each side so it slowly gets less and less visible. Same with the resizing. You set the images or video at x size at postion a and move it to z size at position b.

You could in fact do the same thing with a program such as Cool 3-D, It has many ways to export your projects including sequetial TGA's. These can be imported directly into MSP and I'd imagine the other two as well. Those affects I posted above are pretty simple. If you invest a lot of time using it you can create some pretty astounding stuff, just take you forever to set it up. Another thing to note is that it can be very CPU and graphics card demanding, I set up one project that took well over 2 hours to render a 6 second clip. That had a lot of stuff going on though.

One thing I have noticed about Cool 3-D is it creates very realistic particle affects such as fire and smoke. This can't be said of MSP, I guess it's because it harnesses the abilities of the graphics card.

Some quick tips:

For setting up your project use a medium size frame. Set the display & curve quality settings to their lowest quality and work from their. Theirs a icon on the top to render a single frame to see what the output will like. You can also adjust the curve quality before previewing a single frame. Once you get it set up set the output quality to it's lowest setting and create a test video file to make sure it works as you want. Once you have what you want resize the dimensions to full frame and turn the output and curve quality settings to best. Note that their is a higher output called optimal but it's been my experience that it differs little than best but increases the render time 4x to 5X.

Anyhow good luck, your going to have your hands full with the editor alone. :P

[dipstick]

Baldrick wrote:

Works fine with mpc here. Very nice effect! It is fubar cause it has avi header when it is a wmv....wmp doesn't like that. smile.gif

That explains it, because I accidently named it as an avi when I save it, then I changed the extention to wmv.

I used Photoshop and Premiere to do it. But as thecoalman said, you can do it with other NLEs. Even do it for free with Wax-2.

I recently did a Baseball DVD for our Team at the Cooperstown 10u Tournament. Every kid got these cool rings, so I decided to use them in a theme for the videos. Each game starts with the rings. The video starts playing inside the gem and then I zoom into and through the ring to start the game.

thecoalman has the right idea. I took a picture of the ring and imported it into Photoshop. I then duplicated the layer and named them "Top" and "Bottom". On the bottom layer, I used the circular selection tool to select the gem (I used a 5-pixel feather for a better effect), then delete it. I saved as Ring. psd and imported into Premiere as a Sequence.
I put the game video on track-1, Ring bottom on Track-2 and Ring top on track-3. Next I gradually reduced the opacity of Ring top to about 20% to make th gem transparent enough to see the video, but leave enough detail to make it still look like a gem. Then I used the Resize effects equily on Both Ring layers along with the video layer.

I agree with thecoalman, Ulead Cool-3D is a very cool program. I also use it on occation.

Good luck and don't be afraid to experiment.

[proto-man]

Thanks for the help guys. Sorry, does NLE stand for non-linear editor. I tried searching the forum but couldn't find an answer. so would anybody mind helping me or direct me to another page with info.

Or should I create a new topic for this. Appreciate all the help.

[dipstick]

Yes, NLE stands for non-linear editor. You can look in the Tools section under Video Editors for tools.

You may also look for tutorials for the tools that interest you. For example, if you were interested in Premiere, check out the tutorials at www.wrigleyvideo.com to get a good example of what it could do.

After Effect is also great, but you can do about 90% of it in Premiere.
Wax-2 is very cool and very FREE.
Ulead Cool 3D is very cool and reasonably priced.
Bluff Tittler is cool if you just want to make tittles.

The list is endless.

[proto-man]

Ok thanks. But what is non-linear or linear? do you think you could explain it to me. Or direct me to another page.

Or should i start a new topic for this?

[thecoalman]

Ok thanks. But what is non-linear or linear? do you think you could explain it to me. Or direct me to another page.

Just a fancy name for computer based editing.

http://www.videoguys.com/nle.htm

Linear Editing
Most of us are familiar with linear editing. The simplest form of linear editing is called assemble editing or deck to deck. This is when you copy only the "good" parts of a tape over to a new tape. Assemble editing systems often include titlers (character generators) or special effects generators to make the videos more fun to watch. A/B roll editing is when we edit from two or more video sources. An A/B roll system often includes a digital mixer, to let us cut, fade, dissolve and wipe from source A to source B. Insert editing is when we splice in a different scene, or video only, into the middle of an existing video tape. Only very expensive, high end editing decks are capable of insert editing.
Today, linear editing means deck to deck. The quality of your linear editing is dependent on the editing capabilities of your decks. For the best results you need special editing decks with flying erase heads, special editing jacks, pre-roll and time codes. These decks often cost $1000 or more.


Non Linear Editing
When we use the term NLE, we mean editing video from your hard drive. NLE requires two things: editing software and a video capture card to get the video into your computer. Once the video clips are digitized and on your hard drive they can be assembled in any order, with the drag of a mouse, much like moving around sentences in a word processing program.
Non Linear Editing software is timeline based. You start by selecting the in and out points of your scene. Remember, that since everything is digital, we can get frame accurate edit points every time! Each scene is then placed on the timeline. You can lay down more than one track of video and audio onto your timeline. If you want to set your video to music, you start by placing the captured sound file onto the timeline. Next you select and arrange all of your video scenes. You can move scenes and clips around in your video just by dragging them with your mouse. It really is that easy!

The best part about NLE is the effects. Since the video is in digital form, we don't have to worry about time base correctors and frame synchronizers. Our effects are only limited by our own imagination and the software we choose to use. We can add special filters to clean up and restore picture quality, or to place ripples or swirls in the video. We can create awesome transitions between scenes such as page turns, flips, roll ups, and breakaways, plus the standard dissolves and wipes.

When it comes to titling and graphics, NLE lets you go crazy. You can use any Windows true type font, so foreign languages are no problem at all. Want to add a logo or computer graphic you designed onto your video, it's a piece of cake. In fact, we can make it fly, bounce, or spin onto the video. Of course all our titles and graphics can be superimposed and mixed with our video.

You can also add cool plug-ins to your NLE software to create create awesome 3D transitions and effects, like having the video spin into a ball or having moving video on all sides of a rotating cube!! You can morph one image into another, just like in commercials and music videos!

You can even add multiple titles, filters and effects onto the same scene. The power of NLE is truly incredible. Now every videographer can create videos that look and feel like network productions. The video you can create using our video capture cards and software will have your audience cheering, with everyone wanting to see more and asking how you did it.

[proto-man]

Oh, ok. THat clears up some confusion. I guess that is all i need to know to get started. THanks for all the great help. I will be sure to ask you guys for more help if i need it. Thanks again.