Editing videos....what program do you use???

[WartedEmperor]

I have always used Adobe Premiere Pro for all of my videos.

 

[octopuppy]

Final Cut Pro X. FYI - Lynda.com has nice instructional videos.

 

[danvolker]

having used Vegas for many years, i will say Vegas is best with avi files..most cameras today record a h263 or mp4 related format.....Vegas can usually handle them, but will edit better/smoother/faster with avi files....
For you, either the file from the camera is not avi format, or it is an avi with a differemt codec than normal .... Avi or Mov refers to what you could think of as a "wrapper"..pc's like avi wrappers and macs like mov wrappers...most pc users doing video use a standard dv codec for avi....if somehow you are using a non standard codec, there is most likely a free download of a decoder for your version....i use a cineform codec...a cineform avi...it is far superior to standard dv codec for windows...more like pro res 4 2 2 for mac...
you can go to cineform.com and get a free 30 day trial of hd link to convert to best codec...and then use rheir Firstlight program for mind boggling improvents for color and ligjting..far beyond vegas or fcp or premiere.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I've been using Pinnacle Studio 12 for a few years. It has everything I currently need and was very inexpensive on Ebay.

 

[spoolin01]

I really like the results from using a removable red filter in shallow tropical water, say 10 - 40 ft, but had trouble hanging on to mine this last trip. Now I've got numerous clips in need of red restoration. I did a quick try with Pinnacle Studio 14 and it seemed the adjustment latitude was not great on a clip from about 40 ft depth, though I may not have done all I could with the software, that still remains to be checked ( could also have been the clip, it was a shot into nothing but blue water, and it seems the camera really gets it BLUE!) I've also got a copy of Premier Elements 7 that I initially dropped because of the GUI, but now with some Studio experience maybe it won't be so impenetrable. Can anyone comment on the relative capabilities of the common softwares for color and exposure balancing of H264 clips? Are they all fairly similar? Does the free version of Cineform Studio have the FirstLight feature that DanV recommends?

 

[CheddarChick]

Good questions..

 

[yarik83]

I use corel videostudio pro x4. 5th one just came out but I will not be getting it since I am not that heavy into video editing.

To me the choice was obvious.
5/5 cameras that I have all record in quicktime .mov format. While most programs can process .mov... they do not kick out mov files so final video has to be converted, compressed etc.

Nero ultimate lasted me for about 5 years but had its limitations as it was prone to crashing for no particular reason or encoding videos with lower settings.
Corel is a workhorse. I load the movie, click a couple of buttons and it spits out an mp4 format which is compatible with all apple products that I have and compression ratio is beautiful. Unfortunately whereas Nero was easy to use all around, Corel editing is absolutely unmistakably appalling. You have to know where to click and when to make even basic tweaks to the video. I use program once or twice per month and even though it drives me nuts sometimes.

 

[CheddarChick]

All I want is to be able to adjust the white balance....easily.....I can do it in Lightroom for raw files, but can't find the same easy to use format from video.....

 

[dfx]

It should: Does the Olympus write some sort of non-standard .AVI file?

The problem with AVI is that it's just a container format and so the video (and also the audio) can be encoded with any codec. Lots of software will only work on certain codecs.

I haven't done a whole lot of video editing myself, but being a Linux guy, I use Kdenlive. It doesn't have a whole lot of features, but does the basic stuff well enough, which includes color correction. And it doesn't cost a dime.

 

[JamesK]

I did a quick try with Pinnacle Studio 14 and it seemed the adjustment latitude was not great on a clip from about 40 ft depth, though I may not have done all I could with the software, that still remains to be checked ( could also have been the clip, it was a shot into nothing but blue water, and it seems the camera really gets it BLUE!)

I have this program as well. I have not used it much though. How are you making the adjustments for color?


**edit** I found where they are located, in effects, but they are greyed out. I guess you have to purchase it as an add-on?

**Edit 2** I am an idiot. Thanks for your help. I figured it out. Just you mentioning that you could do it helped a lot.