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What's some good video editing software? Free if possible

StinkyPinky

StinkyPinky

Diamond Member
I need to tidy up some home movies but I'm not sure which software to use. I tried Movie Maker but it doesn't even allow you to change contrast which seems a big negative to me.

Basically I just want to do the following

- Change contrast and brightness (some of the movie is too dark)
- Chop out some fluff I don't need


That's it.
 
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HAL9000 said:
Final Cut Studio is very cheap (OSX Only obviously) and It's quite good (I'm told)
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Why even bother answering if you have no clue what you're talking about? Seriously.

Final Cut Studio is $1,000 suite of tools. Not to mention he says Movie Maker, which is a Microsoft Product. So telling him Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Pro is stupid.

The first question is what is your budget? You can get something like Adobe Premiere Elements for around $70. Or you can move up to something like Premiere Pro for $450.

CyberLink PowerDirector 9 has decent reviews and cost around $45. I've never used it because I use Final Cut and occationally Premiere, but it might be work a look. Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.0 Platinum Edition is another one with good reviews and it sells for around $50.

Personally I'd look at the Adobe Premiere Elements.
 
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LikeLinus said:
Why even bother answering if you have no clue what you're talking about? Seriously.

Final Cut Studio is $1,000 suite of tools. Not to mention he says Movie Maker, which is a Microsoft Product. So telling him Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Pro is stupid.

The first question is what is your budget? You can get something like Adobe Premiere Elements for around $70. Or you can move up to something like Premiere Pro for $450.

CyberLink PowerDirector 9 has decent reviews and cost around $45. I've never used it because I use Final Cut and occationally Premiere, but it might be work a look. Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.0 Platinum Edition is another one with good reviews and it sells for around $50.

Personally I'd look at the Adobe Premiere Elements.
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hmm what am I thinking of then, what's the low budget Final Cut option? I'm sure there is one and I thought it was called studio. I did google it.
 
I think this is one of the final frontiers of freeware. Just about every other common category out there that I can think of has some freeware software that at least comes somewhat close to some of the high end commercial software. Image editing (Gimp), Office (Open Office), Audio (audacity), etc... I can't think of anything good for video.
 
Locut0s said:
I think this is one of the final frontiers of freeware. Just about every other common category out there that I can think of has some freeware software that at least comes somewhat close to some of the high end commercial software. Image editing (Gimp), Office (Open Office), Audio (audacity), etc... I can't think of anything good for video.
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Cinelerra for Linux...
http://cinelerra.org/
 
Sony Vegas Movie Studio or Adobe Premiere Elements are likely your best bet, only downside is that they are ~$70 each. I flip flop back and forth between them every few years. Keep in mind though they are still not perfect.

I am currently on Vegas Movie studio 11 and it works well for me, except it can bearly play back a AVCHD file at a decent frame rate on my E8400 system, it can not save a AVCHD file that will work properly on Windows without further processing and it likes to crash when saving certain files. My workaround for this is to only use one of the MainConcept templates. These issues are well documented on Sony's own forums. So if you are a good PC or are just working with standard Definition video and save using one of the Main Concept Codecs it should work well.

Adobe Premiere Elements seems to be working better now than a few years ago, I will try it again when the next version is released. On one previous version several users reported crashing issues with AMD or nVidia cards, I can't remember which. I stopped using it before that because an older version properly support the 640x480x30p video from my still camera. I think that this issue is corrected in the latest version.

There is also Pinnacle Studio, PowerDirector, Corel VideoStudio, and several others.
 
Windows Live Movie Maker lets you adjust the brightness, but not contrast.

MovieMaker 6.0 has a plugin for contrast, but I haven't used it.
 
FishAk said:
Windows Live Movie Maker lets you adjust the brightness, but not contrast.

MovieMaker 6.0 has a plugin for contrast, but I haven't used it.
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WTF? lol. What's the point of just being able to adjust the brightness but not the contrast. So you can make things look really washed out if you want or far too dark.
 
StinkyPinky said:
I need to tidy up some home movies but I'm not sure which software to use. I tried Movie Maker but it doesn't even allow you to change contrast which seems a big negative to me.

Basically I just want to do the following

- Change contrast and brightness (some of the movie is too dark)
- Chop out some fluff I don't need


That's it.
Click to expand...

free video editing? You already have on your computer - Windows Movie Maker!
 
Michael Feerer, Founder and President of Pixelan, says "With SpiceFX 6, users can customize and adjust color, contrast, brightness, blur, sharpness, pan zooms, crops, text position/animation, logo/graphic overlays, and more -- easily and visually. These are all important, everyday editing and effects needs that Movie Maker simply cannot do at all (or very well) on its own."
Click to expand...

http://www.pixelan.com/mm/intro.htm

It's $8 for the basic pack that does contrast.
 
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