Which editing software is best?

[lostinthewoods]

Hello all. This will be my first of many posts here. I'm pretty new to the whole video "anything" arena. If this question has been discussed here which I'm sure it has been if someone would give me a link I'll happily follow it.

Anyway, who do you think has the best editing software out there. Mostly for your basic stuff but will handle the special effects stuff also? I'm messing around with the free trail of ULead Video Studio 11+ right now and it seems ok, I'm still figureing it out. I've read that Vegas is really good stuff too. Last night I downloaded WAX2.0 and looked at it for about 5 minutes last night. It is a different set up than ulead's stuff so the learning curve will be alittle steeper.

Well, I'll stop rambeling for now. I'm open to any and all suggestions here. I would like to stay under $300 forthe software if at all possible.

Thanks in advance for all the help!

lost

[edDV]

There is no one best. Tell us what source formats you want to edit and what output formats. That will help narrow the field.

[lostinthewoods]

I'm using a miniDV Sony camcorder. I'm looking to save most of the video I have to dvd.

Thanks,
lost

[edDV]

For entry packaged products in no particular order

Adobe Premiere Elements
Sony Vegas Movie Studio
ULead Video Studio

Each has a different feel and a demo. Each has a "premium" version that adds HDV and each has a "pro" upgrade path.

For simple DV capture over IEEE-1394 try WinDV

There are many ways to edit using a strings of specialty tools listed to the left.

This thread discusses issues of encoding DV to MPeg2.
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic264730.html

[lostinthewoods]

ed,

Thanks for all of the help and info. I've been reading about the new Vegas 8. I would assume that this is a pretty hotrod program. Kind of 2 steps above the ulead Video Studio 11+ I'm using now? Would vegas 8 do everything that the program I'm using now is able to do. That may seem like a dumb quesiton but some software seems to do somethings well while others do not. I really like the idea of being able to plug in filters for effects and such as I would love to be able to make short movies some day and edit in effects. the ulead software doesn't seem to be able to handle that like what I've read about vegas.

thanks again,
lost

[edDV]

ed,

Thanks for all of the help and info. I've been reading about the new Vegas 8. I would assume that this is a pretty hotrod program. Kind of 2 steps above the ulead Video Studio 11+ I'm using now? Would vegas 8 do everything that the program I'm using now is able to do. That may seem like a dumb quesiton but some software seems to do somethings well while others do not. I really like the idea of being able to plug in filters for effects and such as I would love to be able to make short movies some day and edit in effects. the ulead software doesn't seem to be able to handle that like what I've read about vegas.

thanks again,
lost

I use both programs. I like Ulead VS for interfacing with TV tuners and various other general tasks. It also does real time MPeg2 encoding if your processor is up to it. I use Vegas for editing, filtering, effects, compositing and other more serious applications but it won't work with tuners or encode inputs in real time. Neither will Premiere Pro which I use for graphics intensive work.

[lostinthewoods]

A dumb question here. What do you mean by "interfacing with TV tuners and real time MPeg2 encoding". Sorry to be such a pest, as I mentioned I'm pretty new to this.

thanks again for all the help,
lost

[edDV]

A dumb question here. What do you mean by "interfacing with TV tuners and real time MPeg2 encoding". Sorry to be such a pest, as I mentioned I'm pretty new to this.

thanks again for all the help,
lost

For example, selecting a TV channel on a computer tuner and capturing video manually or under timer control. Capture can use hardware compression (built into tuner hardware) or be uncompressed or compressed on the fly using the CPU.

Vegas and Premiere import and process files. They don't control tuners and they don't compress MPeg from a live source.