Posted on 11/13/2009 9:34:45 PM PST by freemike
I am looking for a cheap but nice video editing tool> Something I can use to make movies but do photo shop stuff with the movies. Changing faces, adding voices, that kind of thing. Any ideas or suggestions?
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You probably need 2 programs.
Windows Movie Maker is included with Windows and will probably suffice for your video editing. It handles sound, video, titles and has many effects. It’s not the best one, but it’s free and it will do the job.
You will need a separate photoshop program. A good one is Paint Shop Pro by Corel. Affordable too. It will do all that stuff your asking and Windows Movie Maker like all Video Editing software can use the jpegs or gifs that you make in photoshop.
$69.99 here:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1207602307920#versionTabview=tab1&tabview=tab0
Try Pinnacle, you can use it for free for 30 days.
Agree on “Pinnacle”...........they are great. Pretty good support, too. Anyway, Pinnacle is owned by AVID (Hollywood editor’s choice of system for many years). I have Pinnacle and really like it. Intuitive and user-friendly.
It’s not as good an editor as Adobe Premiere, nor as powerful a compositor as After Effects, but jahshaka has one great and one small virtue: it’s free, and fairly powerful at both editing and compositing.
It’s available as open sourceware for the PC, and is much better than Windows freeware or PSP frame-by-frame cell redraws.
For more information, see http://jahshaka.org/
Gimp (Gnu image manipulation program) is free and will handle the image editing needs of most people.
For your audio tracks, use Audacity. Audacity is free and has more capabilities than most people need.
Here are some suggestions:
If you use a PC (Windows operating system):
1. My first choice for video editing software on PC is “Vegas” made by Sony. It’s up to version 9 now and handles high-definition quite well. The DVD authoring application that complements it is “DVD Architect”, which is also excellent. Vegas is a powerful tool, yet also quite easy to learn. Some of the other choices below are part of “suites” of apps that include, for example, motion graphics editors, music composing applications, etc. “Vegas” is not technically part of such a suite, but Sony does make additional applications that work with it to create a complete video presentation: In addition to “DVD Architect” mentioned above, there is “SoundForge” (audio editing and sweetening); and “Acid” (an interesting soundtrack-composing app that uses short motific music clips of only a few seconds, each called a “loop.” By stacking loops on top of each other, you create various textures to accompany your movie.)
2. My second choice is “Premiere Pro” made by Adobe. You can purchase it as a standalone application, or as part of a Creative Suite (Adobe is up to version 4 on their Creative Suites, usually abbreviated simply to “CS4”) that usually also includes various graphics and design tools tools such as Photoshop (for image manipulation); Illustrator (for vector drawing); InDesign (for page layouts, such as magazine or newsletter spreads, brochures, etc.); Acrobat Professional (for creating and editing PDF documents); Flash (for Web animations); Dreamweaver (for Web site design); and After Effects (for compositing, titling, special effects, and animation). The suites are customizable, so you don’t have to purchase all the applications.
I’ve worked on many projects using both Vegas and Premiere Pro and much prefer Vegas — I find, also, that Vegas is much more stable than Premiere Pro, which seems to crash a lot.
If you use a Mac, I recommend the following:
1. Final Cut Pro. This is a professional application manufactured by Apple that is now being utilized for editing feature films, television shows, and commercials. You can purchase it as a standalone, or as part of a suite of tools meant specifically for video editing (”Final Cut Studio”). Apple has just released Final Cut Studio 3 which includes: Final Cut Pro (for video editing); DVD Studio Pro (for authoring DVDs); Motion (Apple’s version of After Effects, used for special effects, titling, compositing, and animation); Color (a powerful color-correction application for smoothing out the inevitable color discontinuities that occur when shooting video — or film, for that matter — under different lighting conditions); Compressor (for compressing large files into smaller ones for DVD or Web streaming); SoundTrack Pro (creating music scores and soundtracks) and LiveType (an application for generating interesting titles).
The Adobe CS4 products also have a Mac version, so I suppose one could always use “Premiere Pro” on the Mac; however, there really is no comparison between “Premiere Pro” and “Final Cut Pro.” If you’re on a Mac and you can afford Final Cut Pro, don’t bother with Premiere Pro.
Finally, I should mention that there’s another professional-level video editor called “Avid” (made by a company of the same name) and which has both a PC version and a Mac version. There are actually a few different video editors made by Avid; the most popular is “Avid Media Composer.” Avid was actually first-in-the-field with digital video editing (formerly called “non-linear editing”) and you used to have to purchase both the software and a pricey piece of hardware. So originally, it could only be afforded by broadcast companies and post-production houses (many of which still have their old Avids and are not about to give them up for PCs or Macs). Avid, however, began to encounter lots of competition from Apple when the latter came out with Final Cut Pro which works just great on Macs of any size — I often see young people editing video on little Mac laptops while sipping their chic lattes in Starbuck’s. So Avid scrapped its hardware and re-coded its software so that today, one only has to purchase a piece of software for either PC or Mac (there’s also a stripped-down version of the Avid Media Composer called “Avid Xpress”). Ever since an Academy Award winning editor named Walter Murch (”Apocalypse Now”; “The English Patient”; etc.) edited a feature film a few years back called “Cold Mountain” entirely on a Mac using Final Cut Pro, I think it’s not too inaccurate to say that “Final Cut” is probably used more in feature films now, while Avid is used more in television. Avid is not part of a suite of complementary apps, and is sold only as a standalone.
There are also scaled-down version of the pro applications that are less expensive, but also do less. There’s “Final Cut Pro Express” and “iMovie”, both Mac-only and both made by Apple. And as mentioned above, there’s also “Avid Xpress”, for either PC or Mac.
In sum:
On PC:
Vegas (Sony)
Premiere Pro (Adobe)
Avid Xpress or Avid Media Composer (Avid)
Windows Movie Maker (Microsoft - a free application that used to be included as part of Windows XP. You can download it from the Microsoft site. It doesn’t do all that much — has a few basic transitions — and if I remember correctly, it only renders the final video in Windows Media Video format, so you can’t render something to QuickTime or MPEG4 or AVI. On the other hand...it’s free.)
On Mac:
Final Cut Pro (Apple)
Premiere Pro (Adobe)
Avid Xpress or Avid Media Composer (Avid)
Final Cut Pro Express (Apple)
iMovie (Apple) (iMovie is Apple’s equivalent of Windows Movie Maker except better. It’s generally part of a suite of desktop apps meant for corporate presentations, the best known app being “Keynote” which is Apple’s version of Microsoft Power Point — except better. The suite of apps is called “iLife” and includes iMovie, Keynote, Pages (similar to Word), and Numbers (similar to Excel).
Keep in mind that video editors are meant for just that: editing video. They are not, in general, used for animation. If you’re interested in animation (and titles are often animated, so they should properly be thought of as a kind of animation), you will also need a specialized application known as a “compositor”; i.e., an app that composites. “To composite” is to overlay one video clip (or animation) on top of another video clip (or animation) in order to create a unique third clip. “Photoshop” is actually a compositor, except that it deals only with still images, not video. By far the most popular compositing tool today is “After Effects” by Adobe. “AE” often forms the backbone of many special effects houses, which then add on to it with additional software. It’s a very powerful application, though it has a bit of a steep learning curve. Apple has its own compositor called simply “Motion” and which is part of the “Final Cut Studio 3.” It’s an excellent tool — a bit less difficult, I think, than After Effects, though not nearly as popular.
For training, I think the best place to go is online to “Lynda.com.” For $25/month and no long-term commitment, you can access thousands of interactive training courses presented by very knowledgeable practitioners. You can find interactive courses in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, 3D animation, etc. If you’re interested in code, there are courses in HTML and JavaScript. Frankly, I don’t know a single person in video/film editing or graphic design who does not subscribe to Lynda.com.
Anyway, I hope some of this was useful.
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excellent recommendations. i agree with the mac end suggestions—windows . . . never edited a thing except still images in Paint on windows. :-)
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Ubuntu is good but I prefer Mint, which is actually a tad better, IMO, than Ubuntu. I use Mint in a dual boot capability(I did have Ubuntu loaded but changed to Mint).
With this, will I be able to do photo shop things, like, put change backgrounds, change faces on people, manipulate the video and things like that?? I’m not looking for anything super professional, just something to have some fun with.
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