What is your favorite Video editing Software?

[PeaceDog]

Everyone will find beauty in the software they learn on first - that tends to be my experience.

For me, if you're looking for reasonably-priced consumer packages, I have done good work on Pinnacle platforms. For Mac, the best bet past iMovie is Final Cut Express.

Personally, I use Avid Express Pro and Final Cut HD. Both have their own quirks and attributes.

 

[AevnsGrandpa]

I use Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro. I used to edit on Premeire but then it was harder to use and I still had to use a second package to create my DVD's

Jeff

 

[ronrosa]

Everyone will find beauty in the software they learn on first - that tends to be my experience.

Not for me.

I learned Premiere 1st. Besides learning editing and I also learned how buggy, unreliable and how much Premiere crashed my PC.

Next up was EditDV. Much more stable, faster, easier to use, but the company got bought out and goodbye EditDV.

Next up Vegas. Extremely stable, very easy to use, very fast. Company got bought out, but thankfully have kept the product supported and continued development. I'm sure there are many good, stable products out there, but Vegas does everything I need and I see no need to change or upgrade versions until I go HD.

 

[ChrisA]

You ask "What is your favorite Video editing Software?" but that is like asking "what is your favorite car?" Many people have favorites they can't or don't own and use. I drive a 1993 Ford Pickup. Ask me what my favorite car is and it's likey not what I drive. Same with dive computers. That Suunto D9 looks nice, 'till you see the price tag.

The next dimension is what you need to _do_ with the software. If your task is not the same as mine we might have different "favorites" What kind of video are you making. I have this idea where we see this little girl go into a tourist submarine in HI and look out the window and then we the viewer see what she sees or maybe what she imagines she sees or maybe we don't know if she is seeing it or imagining untill we see her smimming 60 feet down with no gear amog the corel reefs and sea turtles. A work like that requires a compositer and a lot a photoshop-like drawing tools iMove would be the wrong package. But then maybe you have a job where you follow tourist divers and record them, cut the show down to 15 minutes burn to DVD. IMove would be great for that

When someone says "I like XX" you might want to ask what else he has used. This comes up when new divers ask about regulators. Most will recommend the one they use but few have used more then one or two So the recomendations are not worth much unless they come from someone who has used several and can tel you the differences between them.

I use something called "cinelerra" it wins in terms of features to price ratio but is not really what you's called a consumer level system, a bit quirky still and comes with a steep learning curve http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

 

[TRIG]

To ChrisA
Very good answer , helps put things in perspective .

 

[NAIBdiver1]

I started out using Windows Movie Maker II and it's a great free program and like an earlier poster wrote - it's very easy yo use.

In April I was on a liveaboard and had some really interesting conversations with another videographer about editing programs. The DVD's of his work that he brought along on the trip were outstanding.

Upon arrriving home, I started expermenting with Adobe Premiere 6.0 and though I have no doubt that it's an excellent program, the learning curve is way to high for me. I just don't have the time that would be required to learn to use this program.

The other program that I tried was Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6.1. Up to this point, I'm really getting along with this program. Between the tutorial that came with it, another tutorial that I purchased, emails from the fellow I met on the live aboard and webforums, this seems as though it's my program of choice for the moment.

These are the only three programs that I've tried or used, and am likely to use for the time being as this stuff is expensive.

Oh yea, after seeing video edited in better software than WMM II, I knew I wanted something else. WMM really compresses the files to make it fit onto smaller hard drives. If you go to Adobe Premiere or Pinnancle Liquid Edition, plan on purchasing a very large hard drive to captur in .avi. I ended up buying a 250GB HD just for this. But the larger uncompressed .avi is so much better than the very compressed .wmv of WMM II.

NAIBdiver 1

 

[RickSp]

Sony Vegas is great software. I got really tired of Premiere's interface and instability. Glad I moved on to Vegas.

 

[Moogyboy]

My video card came with Ulead's cheap video software (what's it called? Studio? Movie Studio?) and I said what the heck and installed it. Haven't used it yet. The tutorial/quick tour thingie made it definitely look whizbang consumery, but I haven't actually tried using it yet. I may make a test tape with my camcorder (ie lots of pauses since that's what I figure the auto scene detect detects) and try the whole download/edit procedure out.

I still want to check out Premiere Elements.

cheers

Billy S.

 

[drbill]

I learned Premiere 1st. Besides learning editing and I also learned how buggy, unreliable and how much Premiere crashed my PC.

Interesting. I see two posters had stability problems. Wonder what version(s). I've used both Premiere 5.1 and 6.0. I find them to be quite stable and the project file integrity to be superb.

Perhaps there was a problem with the hardware you were using? I spent a fair bit of time researching my components since I built my current video editing computer from scratch with hardware that was reputed to be compatible.

 

[jonix]

Pinnacle Studio 9