My video editing experiences

[NAC]

I'm finishing up my third annual dvd for family. I include a video or two edited with clips from the year or previous years, a holiday greeting, and the videos I made in previous years. I really enjoy my hobby, as does my family. I wanted to share some of my experiences with software, which might help others.

First off, I really like Windows Movie Maker that came with Vista. There are some limitations, but the program's stability and ease of use make up for it in my opinion. At least for a beginner. I bought Adobe Premiere Elements 7 – which I hate. That program is not very stable, slow, and hard to use. The functionality over Windows Movie Maker is not worth the extra time it takes. That being said, I do want to try Sony Vegas next year. I will definitely spend time with the trialware version before I buy.

Second – I upgraded from a minDV SD camcorder to a HD camcorder. I also take video from 3 different cameras – a compact Canon, a Canon SLR, and a cheap compact GE. Each saves in a different format, and Windows Movie Maker can only import from the SD camcorder and compact Canon without conversion. I experimented with a lot of conversion programs, and I was surprised that searches in this forum, Google and videohelp didn't quickly lead me to a good choice. I've settled on WinFF and FFmpeg. It takes in the .mts (from the HD camcorder), and the .mov (from the SLR and GE camera) and converts to whatever I want. For now I convert to WMV files. WinFF is the gui for FFmpeg, and is very easy to use and flexible.

Lastly, I use DVDStyler to create the DVDs. It is extremely flexible without forcing me into templates like Windows DVD Maker and Premiere Elements. I highly recommend this freeware program. I found it easy to use, you just have to right click around to find all the options.

In a year or two I'll edit everything in HD and make blue ray as well as DVD discs. But my general goal is to try my best and gradually get better each year. No need to be cutting edge or perfect – since there is no such thing as perfect.

I'm interested to read others' experiences or try to answer any questions.

 

[bendixG15]

Here's a place for lots of video answers.

http://forum.videohelp.com/

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

How much have you spent already? Or what is your budget?

 

[NAC]

I'm not looking for opinions on other stuff to buy.

But to answer your question - for software so far I only bought Adobe Premiere / Photoshop Elements 7 for $99.

 

[Childs]

I recently tried Premiere Pro CS5 and I'm shocked as to how sluggish it is, especially compared to FCP 7 on a slower Macbook Pro. Setting up the sequence settings also feels limited, as its gives the impression that it was designed around DV and what people were doing 3 years ago. I'm trying to use it for making gameplay videos, and it just does not like Lagarith at 1080p60, as it gets slow, choppy, and crash prone. FCP 7 handles HuffyUV 1080p60 via Perian like it was DV.

Still, its very FCP like in appearance, just without the polish. Also tried Vegas 10, which feels like a step below Premiere, which is as it wasn't the pro version, but you can also get it for around $50. At that price I don't know why you would need more unless its your profession. I'll keep using Premiere until either the trial expires or I finally get around to building my Hackintosh. I guess I should look at Vegas a little bit more and work out some of the usability issues as it may just be a case of RTFM, cause its cheap. If Premiere Pro was priced at what Elements is, it would seem usable for the money. As its priced now, and its stability, I'm not sure what market its for. I guess its just another tool to have in the CS suite, but not really meant to be used on its own.

EDIT: So Premiere is doing a conversion of the lossless 1080p60 source in the background on import, which must be contributing to the sluggishness. Converting to Prores on the MacBook Pro and using that in Premiere makes the app usable, until you render. Abobe Media Encoder is using 3GB of RAM by self, and Premiere wants that much or more, so I can't edit and encode at the same time. Even though I've been using W764 since the beginning this is the first time anything wanted to use all the RAM in my machine. I figured out the sequence settings issue I was having (RTFM fix). All in all its not too bad.

 

[Rottie]

Adobe Premire and Premire Element are very easy to use. I love both..but that was old version. I got them from CL for 50 buck

 

[Cattykit]

I recently tried Premiere Pro CS5 and I'm shocked as to how sluggish it is, especially compared to FCP 7 on a slower Macbook Pro. Setting up the sequence settings also feels limited, as its gives the impression that it was designed around DV and what people were doing 3 years ago. I'm trying to use it for making gameplay videos, and it just does not like Lagarith at 1080p60, as it gets slow, choppy, and crash prone. FCP 7 handles HuffyUV 1080p60 via Perian like it was DV.

Still, its very FCP like in appearance, just without the polish. Also tried Vegas 10, which feels like a step below Premiere, which is as it wasn't the pro version, but you can also get it for around $50. At that price I don't know why you would need more unless its your profession. I'll keep using Premiere until either the trial expires or I finally get around to building my Hackintosh. I guess I should look at Vegas a little bit more and work out some of the usability issues as it may just be a case of RTFM, cause its cheap. If Premiere Pro was priced at what Elements is, it would seem usable for the money. As its priced now, and its stability, I'm not sure what market its for. I guess its just another tool to have in the CS suite, but not really meant to be used on its own.

EDIT: So Premiere is doing a conversion of the lossless 1080p60 source in the background on import, which must be contributing to the sluggishness. Converting to Prores on the MacBook Pro and using that in Premiere makes the app usable, until you render. Abobe Media Encoder is using 3GB of RAM by self, and Premiere wants that much or more, so I can't edit and encode at the same time. Even though I've been using W764 since the beginning this is the first time anything wanted to use all the RAM in my machine. I figured out the sequence settings issue I was having (RTFM fix). All in all its not too bad.

That's strange that Premiere Pro CS5 is behaving badly on your setup. It must be a codec issue though I'm not sure.
For those who use heavy h.264 files, Ppro CS5 is the best thing to the point it is cosidered as a revolution. Tons of professionals who used to look down on Premiere are even migrating to it.
Vegas pro 10 has gotton better compared to 9 but it's nowhere near Ppro CS5 and plug-in makers seemed to have stopped supporting it.

Anyways, I have I7 @ 3.6ghz, GT 240, 8GB memory and I don't know how those programs run on low-end machines.

 

[Rottie]

Anyways, I have I7 @ 3.6ghz, GT 240, 8GB memory and I don't know how those programs run on low-end machines.

Are you trying show off with your rig better than my rig below?

 

[beginner99]

I recently tried Premiere Pro CS5 and I'm shocked as to how sluggish it is, especially compared to FCP 7 on a slower Macbook Pro. Setting up the sequence settings also feels limited, as its gives the impression that it was designed around DV and what people were doing 3 years ago. I'm trying to use it for making gameplay videos, and it just does not like Lagarith at 1080p60, as it gets slow, choppy, and crash prone. FCP 7 handles HuffyUV 1080p60 via Perian like it was DV.

Name any adobe product that isn't slow, sluggish and bloated considering what it does and the alternatives. Photoshop might be the only exception. But there are flash, Acrobat (Reader), ...

I wonder how such a company can actually be so successful.
(And no I'm not Steve Jobs or an Apple fan boy )

 

[Childs]

That's strange that Premiere Pro CS5 is behaving badly on your setup. It must be a codec issue though I'm not sure.
For those who use heavy h.264 files, Ppro CS5 is the best thing to the point it is cosidered as a revolution. Tons of professionals who used to look down on Premiere are even migrating to it.
Vegas pro 10 has gotton better compared to 9 but it's nowhere near Ppro CS5 and plug-in makers seemed to have stopped supporting it.

Anyways, I have I7 @ 3.6ghz, GT 240, 8GB memory and I don't know how those programs run on low-end machines.

My system isn't slow...i7 950@4Ghz, 6GB RAM at the time (Now 12GB), GTX 460 and 8TB R5 eSata storage. But yeah, the problem was mainly codec related. I was using Huffy 1080p60, then Lagarith 1080p60, and it was just sluggish. Adding another 6GB RAM helped, but switching to Prores and DNxHD probably helped more. Once I started editing in these codecs everything was much more responsive.

Name any adobe product that isn't slow, sluggish and bloated considering what it does and the alternatives. Photoshop might be the only exception. But there are flash, Acrobat (Reader), ...

I wonder how such a company can actually be so successful.
(And no I'm not Steve Jobs or an Apple fan boy )

haha, true enough. I dont usually use Adobe products but I figured I'd use my PC for more than just games which meant using Premiere. Its actually pretty good, of course it tries to clone just about everything in FCP. In this case its a good thing, as moving between the two is painless, especially now I have decent intermediary codec options.