What is the best Video Editing program?

Toad21

Limp Gawd
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Jun 29, 2004
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I have a TV Capture card, and can encode directly in divx. I want a Video editing program that will save to divx, and that doesnt crash my machine. I used Adobe Premier 6 and 7, and both would crash my machine when I tried to open a 30 minute 100 meg file.

My machine specs have been upgraded since then, but I had more than enough computer power to edit videos back then too. Now my machine is a power house, so maybe that will make a differnce.

What is the best Video Editing program that supports divx(mpeg4)?
 
For video editing and special effects, I use Adobe After Effects. It is a super program and can input and output DivX. Check it out.
 
virtualdub is great (and free) for cutting clips, resizing, cropping, other post production type stuff. it doesn't do effects/transitions or anything crazy like that but if you just need to cut commercials say, vdub is for you. (no link, just google)
 
Adobe After Effects. I will check it out tonight. I used virtual dub, that is what crashed on me, and is pretty frekin difficult to use, I mean not difficult, but there are like 20 steps to save into divx.


Any others?
 
I got Ulead VideoStudio 7 SE DVD with my capture card and it's a pretty nice proggy. You can use it to capture video and edit video/sound/some special effects.
It can create basic dvd menus.
It may not be what you're looking for because I don't think it encodes into divx or xvid but you can input divx or xvid into it for editing.
I like it, but it's pretty basic.
 
after effects is a pain in the ass to do video editing on, however it rocks for special effects like no other. check out adobe premiere for the actual editing. it rocks, and works seamlessly with after effects (as should be expected). If you're on a mac, however, i STRONGLY recomend Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro (whichever your budget allows for). Both are AMAZING.
 
I'm mainly using Adobe Premier Pro for editing and conversion. It loves the Pentium 4 core BTW and if it's a HT P4 it will run Adobe in multiprocessor mode.
 
Ulead media studio 7 is nice software, i dont know if you can output to divx but i would say with a little tweaking it would work nicely
 
premiere pro is one of the buggiest piece of software i've ever experiences on several workstations (when no other software has problems) and read about online. i'd wait for premiere pro 1.5 (as shown in the latest NAB 2004 show) but then again i wouldn't get my hopes up.

as for your question, "best" is a relative term in the world of video editing. it's all about how comfortable you are and NOT about which software you are. try the demos and see how comfortable you are about learning any of them and go for it. ALL vid editors (except maybe windows movie maker and final cut) require A LOT of time to learn it.

as for myself i've gotten pretty comfortable with vegas since 4 and it's on 5 now. it also comes with DVD architect, a DVD authoring program... though there are better ones out there. i've played around with premiere since 4.x and it's always been sorta an odd duck. final cut is sooo awesome... but i can't afford a mac... though i'm thinking about running *nix and trying fc on that. but with *nix also comes cinelerra:

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
^it's one of the best FREE (truly FREE) NLE in the world. it's not too shabby either. wish i had time to setup and dedicate some hardware to the cause.

there's also avid express dv, a bit bloated when in software mode. it definitely needs hardware support for its realtime fx, previews, etc. ulead is clunky and amateur. let's see... i can't think of anything else now.
 
Well adobe premier crashes on me. It will do 30 seconds of video fine, but if it gets into the 100's of mgs video, it will freeze up my comp.

So i want the most reliable video editing that gives me Divx input and output.
 
Definately go with AVID if your looking for pro. But aside from that Premiere works great, I wonder if your's is corrupted or something? Or your DIVX download is bad.

I use 6.5 since I loathe the pro version with a passion. I can encode to Divx, Xvid, Mpeg or anything without any problems.
 
Hyperion said:
Avid is the Pro's choice ... that or Final Cut Pro. ;)

I give a vote for Avid Xpress or Adobe After Effects (only if you don't have to edit, editting is a bitch in AE, if you have to edit use Premiere)

Final Cut Pro is the best editing software I have ever used. BUT. Its only for Macs. Its made by apple for apple. If you have a Mac, get FCP.
 
Windows Movie Maker 2, you can find it at their website. It small (11 megs) and has simple effects, transitions, and easy to setup clips. Nothing special, but does the job in an enormous fashion.
 
what? no one ever heard of vegas? it's one a the best things since sliced bread. prem needs a good hardware to accelerate it and make it not crash. avid is too expensive for the amount of features it doesn't have. final cut is the best out of everything but you need a mac, hence it is expensive option. vegas is well priced and is quite powerful as an all around type of software.
 
Oh excellent I just saw that reply above me. I 2nd that! You should try using Vegas definitely. I was ripping and encoding DVD footage for a music video, and everytime I exported from Premiere after cutting the footage together (completely lossless and/or NO compression whatsover) the movie became aliased pretty badly. ;) Vegas == better than most.

~Ear
 
For simple cuts and re-orders, virtualdub is slick, stable, and encodes anything into anything.

For sound layering, transitions and green-screening, etc. use premiere

other special effects, I guess after effects. I've never used it though...
 
I'll throw in another vote for Vegas 5. It runs pretty decent on my lowly 500 MHz machine and it supports network rendering if you have more than one computer. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but it is well worth the money IMHO.
 
Not Ulead Video Studio 6 LE -- It does transition effects between video segments only. I don't know about any other versions since 6 came with my USB + FireWire card combo. Overall, I'm not too happy with it after taking a shot at clay-mation... Way too much bloat for my P3 @ 900MHz to handle with adding transition effects, etc.

I'm going to be trying Cinelerra myself when I get my Dually Athlon... The specs are insane, but I hope for good things from it...




And might I suggest, with your source material don't compress it (too much, if at all)... Save compression for the finalization / release. 200MB an hour... I can only imagine the artifacting... :eek:

Plus the compression of source material could be what your issues are caused by. Variable MP3 audio streams...bad idea... There are probably a few other things that compression does to make software mad...
 
K2Rage101 said:
For sound layering, transitions and green-screening, etc. use premiere

other special effects, I guess after effects. I've never used it though...


:eek: And thats pretty obvious that you never used After Effects.... cause the green-screening/ keying tool is much much much much better in after effects.
 
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