Trying to decide on SW: Video editing, DVD Authoring...

[ewingr]

Over the past I've been using Adobe Premier to edit together combinations of digital pictures, and videos, along with music, then auhtoring into a DVD with Ulead DVD Workshop.

Now I have a camera that does 1280X720 Video, and Higher Res pics, and have moved to Windows Vista on my PC. I"m needing to update my software collection.

Having just downloaded the trial of Ulead MovieFactory 6, I find that I"m not sure it is as feature ritch as the older product, at least, when creating HD movies. Only 1 template for menus. And when the movie is created, there is not chapter options to go to across the movies from the player.

And while I love Premier, I'm not sure that for personal use the expense of moving to the latest Adobe premier is what I want to do.

So, I"m posting to inquire what any suggests as best alternatives that I should evaluate for creating my movies. Again, what I like to do, is combine a movie/slide show type of effect, where I will have pictures with nice transitions; occasionally titles, or scrolling text; somtimes audio comments or funny sound effects; and short video segments as well through the movie.

On the DVD, I like to be able to have menus where I can select to go to a specific point, and I like to have chapters to move to through the movie.

And of course, I want the best quality possible, but also be able to export to various formats, wheter for web, or mobile device.

Any recommendations?

[edit]
By the way, I need to be able to do .mov files for my movies. I even thought about using Moviemaker, but of coursoe, it doesn't support .mov files.

[Hawkes]

I'll always recommend Sony Vegas above anything else, it's my favorite editing program. It has quite a big library of effects and transitions included and the price tag is way less than Premiere.

[ewingr]

Thanks! I'll check it out.

[ewingr]

Well, I've downloaded the demo, and it looks pretty nice. But it blows up about every 5 min of doing things on my PC, so I'm not sure about this one. Do you find it buggy?

I guess I'll try the same with Premier.

[ewingr]

Just an update for anyone that may be interested.

I find that both Premier, and Sony have problems importing my movies. So, it makes me suspicious of the movie files. They are .mov files, created with my Kodak camera.

The will pull them in if I do just a small number at a time. But then once in, it becomes unwieldly to work with. Long hangs, hourglass etc.

ON the other hand, I took a the GB of files I have to a friend and he loades them pretty easily with his Roxio Create 2009 (they don't have a trial, so I can't 'try' it. It is pretty nice software, but I think not as flexible as Adobe.

If I found it working better for me, the one thing that I am disappointed with Sony Vegas in compared to Premier is the titler in Premier is nice. So far I haven't found anything at all in Sony.

Still mucking around trying to decide what to spend the $ on.

[edDV]

Look up the specs on your Kodak camera to see what you are dealing with. "Mov" is just a wrapper and says nothing about the codec being used. Usually its MJPEG but for HD, probably some form of MPeg4 for tighter compression to a flash card. That would explain your editing troubles. A 1.8GHz PC won't cut it. Premiere CS4 and Vegas Pro make no claims to work with digital camera files. You would need to first convert to a format they do support.

[ewingr]

My PC is a Quad 4 9450, 4GB ram. I don't think it is the PC.

However, I did look further on the preferences, and I found that while I pointed scratch disks to a disk with more space, I found settings I wasn't expecting for cache files pointing to a disk with not a lot of space. My main drive only has 25GB free. I'm pointint the cache files now to a drive with 200GB free (and it is an internal drive). I changd that, it helped at least get the import, but then it still freezes up when I add to the timeline. After it onces freezes up, I find I have to start a whole new project. I'm thinking something is screwing up the cache maybe. Not sure.

[EDIT]

Hmmm...i just REREAD yoru post, and those two not working with digital camera files, having to convert...pretty much makes me want to not work with them. Converting all the vids I work with would be a pain. And you are right, it is mpeg4

Maybe that also explains why it seems to work so much better wiht the cheap Roxio program. I'd rather use one of the higher end ones, but it's disappoingint they don't work with digital technology at this point in time.

[edDV]

"My PC is a Quad 4 9450, 4GB ram."

That means you can afford a better camcorder.

The rest I don't see the relevance.

[edDV]

but it's disappoingint they don't work with digital technology at this point in time.

They have a long list of problems their core pro users need solved. They aren't in the business to chase toys.

Didn't Kodak pack what they thought their customers needed to edit? Complain to them.

[ewingr]

They have a long list of problems their core pro users need solved. They aren't in the business to chase toys.

Yes, I suppose you are right. I don't imagine the average person using this type of camera would pay that kind of money for their software. I guess I won't be one either.

I can imagine they do have a long list of issues for the pro users based on what I've seen with the trial.

[edDV]

They have a long list of problems their core pro users need solved. They aren't in the business to chase toys.

Yes, I suppose you are right. I don't imagine the average person using this type of camera would pay that kind of money for their software. I guess I won't be one either.

I can imagine they do have a long list of issues for the pro users based on what I've seen with the trial.

That has been chronic with Premiere Pro. Vegas is much more solid but they have an import support list too.

[ewingr]

I just took a look at the Vegas specs, and it does support MPeg4. I guess I'll focus a little more time on that.

Also, I am beginnign to think that maybe a major problem is I need to get my OS moved to a larger drive. 25GB free is a bit tight, and even though I put the files, cache and scratch to another drive, this may be a big part of the problem.

Regarding this:

[quote="edDV... They aren't in the business to chase toys.[/quote]

Sounds a bit like criticism for not spending a lot of $ on a camera. I understand the thought. That being said, it is surprising that I find this < $300 camera is providing 1280X720 HD videos (albeit Mpeg4), 30 FPS, 15X optical zoom, and up to 30 min of single file recording. The pics and videos look very nice on my 92" front projection screen. Much better than SD television.

Is it something anyone would want to use for professional video? Certainly not. But for an amateur photo/video production, it's really does a great job. For home videos, I like to intermix with more photos than videos, and when put together with good editing software, background music that can be faded in and out depending on the video, nice titles, and good DVD menu creation, it makes for a nice home video.

[filmboss80]

You can debate edDV all you want, but he is an expert. Editing Mpeg4 is a messy, messy task, and even with Vegas, you're still likely to encounter problems. I'm afraid it all starts and ends with your video camera's format.

And yes, you need a larger, dedicated drive for video editing.

[lordsmurf]

MPEG-4 is an end format, not a source format for editing with.

Toys shoots video with the idea that what you shoot is what you get. Better cameras are made for shooting raw footage that is intended to be edited.

1280x720 isn't very good HD resolution anyway. And I doubt the lens on the camera is good enough to give a clear pixel image anyhow. You may as well downsample to 720x480 and enjoy more excellent DVDs as you've done in the past, using the same tools.

You might have to convert the MPEG-4 to something less compressed, regardless of method, however. VirtualDub would probably work, extract back to an uncompressed AVI.

[edDV]

There is a basic disconnect here between consumer and professional products. My comments relate to Premiere CS4, Vegas Pro 8, FCP et.al. Those products are standards based with the idea that a few formats are supported well for professional production.

These companies and others have consumer versions of the products that support consumer standards. These products (e.g. Premiere Elements 7, ULead Video Studio, etc.) have various tiers with digital camera movies supported in their top tier products. BUT they support a specific list of cameras because consumer digital camera video is not standardized and each camera manufacturer is doing whatever they want often changing their minds model to model and generation to generation. This is like camcorder video pre DV standard.

If you buy a non-supported camera, it is up to you to figure out the codec used and learn how to decode it. "MPeg4" covers a wide unstandardized territory. Even "h.264" has wide interpretation.

Most of these cameras come with some kind of software (often ArcSoft) that has been customized to that particular model camera. They may or may not provide an upgrade path but usually not.