Video editor recomendations

[pgwerner]

I'm looking for recommendations for a nice, basic video editor for Mac, preferably one that can edit Xvid-encoded videos withour recoding. Also, something fairly intuitive and user-friendly. Preferably not expensive.

I've used Quicktime Pro before, but what I really dislike about it is that as soon as you upgrade Quicktime, you lose your QT Pro license. I've also used D-Vision, but that unfortunately is pretty primative and doesn't splice videos at exactly the point you tell it to.

So, anyway, what do people here recommend?

[terryj]

You only lose the license in Alpha releases,
such as version 6 to 7, and version 7 to 8 of Quicktime.
.x releases DO NOT lose the serial #, unless its a BOOTLEG
serial number. You can safely update incremently,
and NOT lose the license.

Quicktime Pro is the best low cost editor, provided you
have bought/installed all the correct plug-ins you need.
That would be the Holy Trinity: QT Mpeg-2 component,
Perian, and DIVX ( or Toast's equivlent Divx Component).

iMovie is a good editor, but relies on you converting
the video to iMovie's compliant format (.dv).

And of course FCP, FCE.

Also I haven't used, but another that would work is
AeroQ's Quicktime Pro
replacement, SimpleMovieX.

[live4ever]

You should do all the editing before you convert to XviD (mpeg-4 is a delivery format). Where are the source videos from (DV cam? TV capture card? digital camera?) and what is the original codec used?

[pgwerner]

Re: Losing the license to QuickTime Pro: well, what if I want to update Quicktime a full alpha release? I mean, keep in mind that Quicktime is system-level software as well as a player/editor application. To my understanding, if I wanted to keep QT Pro (which is a full, paid-for license, not a bootleg), I'd have to keep all system-level components at QT 6 (which is when I bought the Pro license), not just the QT Pro player/editor. That's kind of a ripoff, in my opinion. Correct me if I'm wrong about this and there is a way to maintain one version of QT Pro while continuing with QT system software upgrades.

Re: what is the original codec? – When I'm talking about editing Xvid-formatted videos, I'm talking about videos that were Xvid-formatted to begin with. I'm talking about being able to do simple editing on them without having to change the codec, bitrate, etc.

Peter

[terryj]

Re: Quicktime----
Quicktime is system level AWARE software, but is not system level.
That means that the latest Quicktime will take advantage of
system level changes ( such as Tiger's increased dependence
on Core Technology, versus Panther's), but is not necessary
having to be upgraded at the drop of a hat.

Your at 10.3.9, and you aren't in Tiger according to your system
Profile. You could stay at Quicktime 6.54 Pro,
and get the majority of things you need to do with no problem.
You DON"T HAVE TO upgrade, unless you are going to
be heavily into h.264, or need to take advantage of Core
Audio or Core Video.

And there is a way to upgrade at least to Tiger and still run
Quicktime 6.54 components, it's been ages, but you'd
have to Search the Apple Forums
(Quicktime Kirk, much malaligned as he is, posted the original hack IIRC) on
how to run a combo of QT 6 PRO with QT 7.02.

Apple makes system changes in each 10.x system release,
and they make QT upgrades for what direction the company
heads: QT 6 was heavy based on MPEG-2, QT 7 is heavy
based on h.264, and thus also enables 3GPP, MPEG-4, and the like.

*shrugs* depending upon your needs, pick the course and
go for it. Would we all like QT to just be Free and PRO,
sure. Will it ever happen, nope. It's one of the....
what do they call it....Privelages of Owning a Mac.

I'm sure you don't want to hear Lord Smurf come rant about this....


Re: Original Codec.
Install Perian, and use QT Pro.
if they are .avi files, use QT Pro or MpegStreamclip.
If you have the proper codec, then you can edit it
in one of these apps without transcoding.s