Good video editing prog for windows?

[the lone gunman]

Ok this is my 1st thread in this section of [H] so this question may have been asked alot of times... however i have recently awaken a passion of mine, movie making =] as a boy i used to make stop frame animation on my sony HI8 video cam.

as times go by and as you get older you seam to lose some of the passion you had for things like this.

However last Xmas i bought my girlfriend a samsung digimax v70. i have never been a big photographer myself but the video recorder on this cam is quite good so.... i borrowed it ....for quite a while =] and made 2 custom music videos for well knows songs and posted them on youtube.

i got quite a good responce from users on youtube so i thought i may do more. however at the moment im using windows movie maker to edit my video. the digimax v70 records in MOV but what i do is convert the MOV files to WMV and them edit with win movie maker.

i will be buying a dedicated hard disk camcorder (when i can afford it) but at the moment i would like some advice on a good video editing software program. i have herd the on the MAC there is a prog called "final cut" which is supposed to be very good. is there anything for windows that is classed as "the best"? as Win movie maker has its limits and i would like a prog with more features.

thanks for reading and sorry for the long thread to get to the point =]

BTW if you want to see the work i did on youtube serch for my name "chestarr1977"

 

[who am I - I ask]

premiere

 

[MScrip]

I'd start with getting a real camcorder first. You will only limit yourself by using videoclips from a digital camera. Why buy "the best" software when you're using the wrong camera for the job? The videos you're making from the camera look fine on YouTube... but a real camcorder will also give you decent quality for DVDs and more.

You can get a decent MiniDV camcorder for a few hundred dollars. Then, get some software.

Premiere is great for Windows. It's expensive, but they also make Premiere Elements for under $100. There are plenty of video editing packages for around $100.

Think twice before buying a hard disk camcorder. Now you're converting MOV to WMV, which is not desirable. A hard disk camcorder will be a similar process. It will shoot in MPG files, which are already compressed, and are a chore to edit "well." MiniDV is still the best bang for the buck, and also has great quality.

 

[the lone gunman]

thanks for the replys. i did look into buying a miniDV but i think the editing will be far to much work as the file sizes are huge once transferd to my PC. i realy only want to do this as a fun hobby so i think a "ready compressed" file take streaght from a HDD camcorder will be easyer for me to work with. i know the quality is not as good as miniDV but i have seen some footage from a sony HDD camcorder and i thought it was quite good.

 

[Zepher]

miniDV will give you an instant hard copy of your raw footage, think about that before you jump on the HDD bandwagon.
Also, hard drives are cheap now, an 80gig drive will hold 400 minutes of DV video. Ratio is 5minutes/Gig.

 

[MScrip]

miniDV will give you an instant hard copy of your raw footage, think about that before you jump on the HDD bandwagon.
Also, hard drives are cheap now, an 80gig drive will hold 400 minutes of DV video. Ratio is 5minutes/Gig.

That's one of the reasons I still like MiniDV. I like knowing that all of my raw footage is already backed up. Sure, it's a pain that it takes an hour to capture each tape... but, it's not that big a deal.

One hour of MiniDV is about 13gb. But, like WS6 said, hard drives are cheap. I first added an 80gb external hard drive... now I'm using a 320gb hard drive. That's almost 25 hours of video.... for $80.

One thing you have to remember, you don't keep the raw footage on the hard drive for very long. For example, I shoot dance competitions. I usually use 3 tapes per weekend. So, when I get home, I start capturing tapes, which takes 3 hours. I've got to switch tapes twice, but it's not that bad. Then I've used up 39gb of hard drive space. I edit the video, create menus and such, and render it for final output. When I'm done, I have the finished files for the DVD. When I'm sure the project is complete, I can delete all of that original footage, leaving only my finished project, and freeing up that 39gb.

But, I've still got the original tapes. They sit in a safe place. I rarely touch them again, but I can if I want to. I'd hate to think that all my videos are only sitting on a hard drive permanently. Using a hard drive camcorder, you are responsible for backing up your footage. And onto what? DVDs? Other hard drives? MiniDV is automatically backed up.

Speaking of hard drive camcorders, I tried to edit some footage from a Sony HDD camcorder. It was a 1 minute MPG clip that another user sent me to test. I imported it, and it crashed Adobe Premiere. I did some Googling, and it turns out that Premiere can't edit compressed MPG files very well. So, no Sony HDD for me. Tapeless video is a nice idea, but it's not entirely practical at this point. Well, not for me. I make money editing videos. So, I have to use what works for me.

Here's my ever growing collection of tapes: