An effective video editing/rendering package?

[Balliol]

I have just about run out of patience with the video editing software that I have. Iit keeps freezing and crashing and I am advised that in order for it to run effectively one has to shut down every other application that is running on the computer and I really don’t want to do that. I have read that the problems I have experienced may be because it is a video editing programme and rendering programme in one and it may be best to separate those functions. I do hope that I got that terminology right.

I know that this question has been asked a thousand times or more. I know that I can not expect total consensus but perhaps a general guide from the number of people who support the same software may help.

My needs are simple: I have several hundred digital photographs. Several hundred 35mm slides and several hundred black and white photographs which I have to scan before building them into a slide show.

I then want to build them into slide shows, add full page/slide titles introductions, titles on each of the photographs, transitions, a music track and menu chapters so that the material on the DVDs can be used flexibly. I then want to burn them to DVS so that they can be viewed at leisure on a television.

When I have done that I have a large number of family VHS tapes which I want to upload to my computer and do the same as I want to do to the photographs.

Looking through the forums it appears that the following are the front runners. What I am looking for are views on which is the most effective. In other words it doesn’t keep freezing and crashing and is capable of being used by someone with a reasonable but not professional level of computer experience.

Adobe Premiere Elements.

Adobe Premiere Pro.

AIST Movie DV 7

Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Plus Sony DVD Architect Studio.

Power Director.

Pure Motion Edit Studio.

Ulead Video Studio.

Ulead Media Studio Pro.

Ulead Videostudio 9

So, what would you go for?

[Balliol]

An addition to the thread.
As I want to start afresh I want to make sure that I use good quality discs but an article I've just read said that the manufacturers don't make it easy to work out which are the better quality discs. I read that it is possible to determine this but one needs to be able to read what code they are and one has to obtain the appropriate software to do this. So, does anyone have view on what are good discs?

[Midzuki]

For your photographic stuff, here go my humble suggestions:

--- Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, or any other reasonable and not-excessively-heavy
image editor;

--- DVD-Lab Pro 2 for decent disk-content authoring;


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[thecoalman]

.....the problems I have experienced may be because it is a video editing programme and rendering programme in one and it may be best to separate those functions. I do hope that I got that terminology right.

Rendering is usualy in reference to the creation of content such as 3-D affects etc. Encoding is the term you are looking for and any editor will have to do this to footage that is changed. What you read was probably in referernce to the oboard MPEG encoding some editors have, the quality is dependant on the necoder they are using and not that they directly encoding to MPEG

My needs are simple: I have several hundred digital photographs. Several hundred 35mm slides and several hundred black and white photographs which I have to scan before building them into a slide show.

I haven't used it but have heard many good reccomendations for Pro Show Gold for this task. It's specifically designed for creating slideshows.

Ulead Video Studio.

Ulead Media Studio Pro.

Can't speak for the others but I use an older version of Ulead Media studio Pro and am very happy with it, this is an advanced editor. Ulead Video Studio is the consumer version but should easily accomodate your needs. Note that both of theses have limited DVD authoring ability, enough to get going but if you want to get really creative during the menus you'll need a good authoring application like DVD workshop or DVD Lab Pro.

As far as the discs go head over to www.digitalfaq.com and read the media guides.