Video editor help

[Brain Of F'n J]

I'm looking for a good video editing program. Something that will clip as well as combine. Anybody got any suggestions?

Jed Shaffer
~Something simple to use, preferably. I'm not George Lucas.

[-Lithium-]

Have you used Windows Movie Maker? Its really simple but is pretty cool and you can do some cool stuff with it...

[Brain Of F'n J]

Yes. I can't stand it. Aside from hating the interface, every time I edit a file with it, the new file I make somehow ends up bigger. No joke, I was taking out a 20 minute clip of video from a 2 hour movie ... the 2 hour movie was, perhaps, 1.5 to 2 gigs. That 20 minute clip, in the hands of Windows Movie Maker, clocked in at 6 GIGS. 3 times the size of the source file, despite being 1/6th the length.

Jed Shaffer
~Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[-Lithium-]

Oh, well I just made like Tribute Vids with them so mine were only like 3 mins long usually so I gues s I just never noticed how big the files were. Its cool though, Sony Vegas is pretty cool but its kinda complicated, but if your just planning to take a clip out of a movie then you shouldnt have a prob with it...

[Brain Of F'n J]

May have to try that one ... can't be worse then the crap I've tried so far.

Jed Shaffer
~Of course, it's a SONY product ... and we all know they've supplanted Microsoft as EVIL.

[kunswwfmark]

If you have acess to a Mac, Final Cut Pro is amazing. It takes a bit of time to learn it, but once you figure it out, it's pretty simple stuff.

If you can't get Final Cut, look for Avid (which is the industry standard).

If you're not really serious about editing and aren't willing to spend much money, then just stick with Vegas or Movie Maker.

[Flynnyrd]

I use Pinnacle Studio for casual home movie editing. If you just want to shrink raw down to .avi or DVD files, use TMPGenc and TMPGenc DVD Author.

www.tmpgenc.net/en/e_main.html

[hbk619 - QUACK!]

brainofj said:

May have to try that one ... can't be worse then the crap I've tried so far.

Jed Shaffer
~Of course, it's a SONY product ... and we all know they've supplanted Microsoft as EVIL.

since when?

and movie maker, if you're using the newer version, chose a lower quality for smaller file size

[Brain Of F'n J]

hbk619 said:

brainofj said:

May have to try that one ... can't be worse then the crap I've tried so far.

Jed Shaffer
~Of course, it's a SONY product ... and we all know they've supplanted Microsoft as EVIL.

since when?

PlayStation 3. Rootkits on audio CDs. Need I present more evidence.

and movie maker, if you're using the newer version, chose a lower quality for smaller file size

[/color][/quote]

But I want to burn said clips to DVDs. So lower quality is counter-productive. Plus, Movie Maker shouldn't be somehow encoding clips to be larger then their source file anyway. That's just bass-ackwards.

Thanks for the help so far. Unfortuantely, all the programs I've tried edit, but I can't save it as a new file without saving it as that program's proprietary "project" file. So ... I don't know what the solution is. If Adobe had a program as simple as Audition for video ...

Jed Shaffer
~I'd like some cheese to go with me whine.

[The Booty Disciple]

I've never had a problem with Nero...reasonably good stuff for editing casually, easy to use interface with several tutorials, and the bundle comes with re-code software for easy conversion to DVD.

I had the 8.0 version...that's a couple years old, but I'm sure there's a newer build.