Best Consumer Video Editing Software for $100

[magillagorilla]

Hi all,
After surfing the sea of inconclusive information about consumer video editing software I turn to you all for help. I would like recommendations on the best $100ish consumer non-linear editing software. I am not expecting PRO results, I just want to throw together family videos for sharing via DVD, internet, and possibly BR in the future.

I have been using Power Director 7 begrudgingly. I have never seen an application crash so often. Time for a replacement.

The straw that broke the camcorders back was that I just got a Nikon D7000 which uses H.264 in the MOV format for video. Power Director will not handle the format, it crashes instantly. All of my video recorders are HD and come in the flavors of AVCHD, MJPEG, and MOV.

Or maybe I'm doing something wrong in Power Director but it should handle 720p MOV files.

My system:
Core2 Quad Q8300 (2.4Ghz)
4GB 800Mhz RAM
500GB SATA WD Caviar Blue 7,200RPM
1TB SATA Samsung Spinpoint F3 7,200RPM

Recommendations please?

[16mmJunkie]

The best ones are free for your needs.....you could always send me 100 bucks if you feel the need Try our "Tools" section located to your left in the browser window and try one that you like if it's not your ball of wax try another. Each item takes a few minutes to review(via a short synopsis) and then you can choose to download.






If the Light ain't Bright, It ain't Right!!

[poisondeathray]

popular ones in that price range are premiere elements and vegas movie studio platinum

they have free trials, so test them out before committing

[jagabo]

Sony Vegas Movie Studio or maybe Corel VideoStudio.

[magillagorilla]

16mmJunkie - I feel you on the free tip because I'm kinda broke. But what I have less of than money is time. Most of the free applications require a lot of tinker time, which I don't have. I know some of the free apps are great and I use some of them but tweek time, reading, scouring the internet for help and hunting down codecs/patches/modules is not my cup of tea.

Vegas and Primere are the two that seem to have the most positive feedback on the net. Thanks for the free trial tip, I will give it a go.

I was wondering who had an opinion on these or others like it on this forum. I don't 100% "buy" in to reviews on retailor sites. Does anyone have experience with these software packages? How do they handle H.264? I heard Primere is a system resource hog (RAM and Proc time), any validity to that?

Thanks again

[lenti_75]

they all are pretty much the same, it's just a matter of personal taste.
try them all and see what suits you best. opinions are subjective.

[magillagorilla]

OK, I intend to try them out. However I find opinion useful on less-subjective issues like: it crashes a lot, it produces noticable noise on renders, it won't run on Win7 64 or it does not handle H.264 dispite its claims.............. Of course these types of issues have many variables but if you hear enough of them from experienced users, I think it counts.

[anzimike]

Check out editstudiopro from mediachance

[edDV]

If you want lots of newbie wizard help, go Premiere Elements. If you want a usable semi-pro NLE go for Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. The feature differences vs. Vegas Pro you can live without if on a budget.

[budwzr]

BEST BET > Vegas Movie Studio 10, and they have a deluxe edition too. Vegas is optimized for H.264, even has gpu support for Cuda cards.

AVC/AAC in a .MOV file is THE GOLD STANDARD of compatibility. Vegas handles it no problem.

Some advanced features are left out from the Pro version, but you won't miss, or even know you needed them, until about a year from now.

Steer clear of lesser known products because some of them look great but are not as robust when you start digging in. Vegas is a native windows app and leverages the Windows API's for speed. Some of the others run in their own space and are system resource hoggs.

[chowmein]

Check out Magix Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus

[fearfultom]

I found Corel's X3 to be the best. Vegas movie studio was only 32 bit, magix wants $5 to activate the HD part, power director crashes, Pinnacle Crashes, Adobe crashes. If vegas had 64 bits and could asscess over 2 gigs of ram it would be a killer program. I have the Canon HFs10 and Corel reads everthing. The 30 day demo lets you do it all so try it. Set it up to use as much memory as you can. Load up with ram if you have room - the 64 bits will use as much as you give it. Hope this helps.

[tin2tin]

If you can wait till the 29. of nov - then Lightworks will be released as opensource/freeware:

[jagabo]

If you can wait till the 29. of nov - then Lightworks will be released as opensource/freeware:

It's likely to be so full of bugs as to be unusable. I hope I'm wrong though!

[budwzr]

Looks like a German website, those "Germs" make some good stuff.

[intracube]

It's likely to be so full of bugs as to be unusable. I hope I'm wrong though!

Lightworks is an established program - just the decision to make it Open Source is recent. I would've thought most of the code base would have relatively few bugs, although I'm not sure how much work has been done in recent months.

Looks like a German website, those "Germs" make some good stuff.

Lightworks was originally British . film-tv-video.de are an online journal for film/tv production and were reporting on the Lightworks stand at the IBC 2010.

Lightworks is now owned by EditShare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightworks

[magillagorilla]

Update:
Went with Sony Vegas 10 Platinum. It came with DVD Architect and Sound Forge (nice to have) and some other junk for $89. The application is really well put together. It will allow 4 video layers per project. I only have 2 cameras so that's fine with me. I've been using it for about 6 weeks and I like it. I'm also not new to NLEs, I've just been out of the field for about 9 years.

Pros:
Very stable, hasn't crashed yet (not even with AVCHD files)
Nice set of codecs including Main Concept MPEG4/2
Great modular GUI, supports multiple screens, you can detetch some tools and place them on a second display
Basic filters work well and allow for temporal adjustments
Good integration with Sound Forge
Good basic audio adjustments built in (compress/limit, noise reduction, EQ)

Cons:
Filter set is limited there is no noise reduction, median, de-interlace.....
Some features are not obvious, like fadeing between multiple video tracks
Rendering 5.1 surround files does not seem to work although it is a feature (you get no sound or 2 channel out-of-synch sound on renders)

[lowellriggsiam]

Good choice, Magilla.

[handyguy]

W7 comes with it own software to do it, which is free.

[jagabo]

w7 comes with it own software to do it, which is free.

lol

[budwzr]

Cons:
Filter set is limited there is no noise reduction, median, de-interlace.....
Some features are not obvious, like fadeing between multiple video tracks
Rendering 5.1 surround files does not seem to work although it is a feature (you get no sound or 2 channel out-of-synch sound on renders)

De-interlace is done in the background automatically according to project settings.
Noise Reduction is done with manual tools like gamma and gaussian blur.
"Median" I don't know what that is.
"Fading" between tracks is done with composite level envelope. Right click on track to enable.

[magillagorilla]

De-interlace is done in the background automatically according to project settings.
Hm, OK. I think I'll go with AVISynth for the de-interlace.

Noise Reduction is done with manual tools like gamma and gaussian blur.
These are not noise reduction techniques. Noise reduction finds out of place or out of range pixels and compensates for them. Gamma just adjusts the "back lighting" and will boost noise as well as good pixels. Gaussian just makes your picture blury and makes no attempt to remove or compensate for bad pixels. There are some great noise reduction filters in VirtualDub, I just wish Vegas had some in its toolbox.

"Median" I don't know what that is.
This is a very valuable filter for restoring video with "bad" or chunky pixels. Like VHS sparklies. It's like gaussian but smarter. A median filter will compare pixels to its neighbor pixels and attempt to soften out of place pixels without loosing the "edges" of the objects in your footage. It's a really nice way to smooth out jagedy areas in video. VDUB has a nice one.

"Fading" between tracks is done with composite level envelope. Right click on track to enable.
Ugggg, I figured this out eventually. I should have asked you 3 weeks ago

[budwzr]

Well, to each his own, but don't forget Vegas filters/effects can be chained. You may need to roll your own Noise Filter that you can save as a preset.

There's a lot of things that can be done in Vegas by combining seemingly disparate effects.

When I was a kid, and still now, I like to premix mayo and mustard together into a "sandwich spread".

[magillagorilla]

budwzr,
What are you doing in Vegas to remove noise? I know how to chain filters and adjust them over a timeline. I see all the contrast, color and bluring effects. How does one combine these to remove noise? Vegas can correct color or add "razzel-dazzel" to my production but I see no filter which identifies bad pixels and replaces them.

Please enlighten me I may be missing something.

[poisondeathray]

Vegas is great editing software, but it's exceptionally poor at deinterlacing and denoising . But you could argue those aren't really "editing" functions ,and other NLE's aren't much better at those 2 functions

[guns1inger]

Romove noise and deinterlace in avisynth, output to a lossless format, edit in Vegas.

You can get a version of Neat Video for Vegas (Pro and Studio) which can do a solid (if slow) job of denoising most footage.

[budwzr]

budwzr,
What are you doing in Vegas to remove noise? I know how to chain filters and adjust them over a timeline. I see all the contrast, color and bluring effects. How does one combine these to remove noise? Vegas can correct color or add "razzel-dazzel" to my production but I see no filter which identifies bad pixels and replaces them.

Please enlighten me I may be missing something.

Give me an example. A still.

[poisondeathray]

Depending on what your project was, sometimes you might want to actually edit first (or make rough cuts at least), then do the noise removal and deinterlacing last .

Presumably stuff would be "cut out", so you wouldn't have to endure as much deinterlacing/denosing on footage on stuff that's going to be cut out anyway (these filters can be very slow to process)

[poisondeathray]

Give me an example. A still.

A still image might be a poor example, because often noise patterns can occur temporally. Good temporal noise filters look at previous and foward frames for noise patterns , tough to see on a static frame

[budwzr]

There is a "Median" filter in Vegas, but I've never used it.

Is it low light noise like grain? Or like tracking error?

I remember fixing a Cinderella clip using chroma key and compositing against an offset still. I must have dumped it though.

Yeah, maybe send in an example clip so we're on the same page.

Anyway, when I mentioned that Vegas automatically de-interlaces you said you prefer Vdub, why is that?