Recommendation for Movie Maker/Video Editing Software?

[Roberto]

Have never bothered much with Video on the bike, but decided to take the plunge and buy a Contour Roam, which at this albeit early stage I'm very pleased with.. splendid little piece of kit it is.

In terms of editing, I've fiddled with the Windows movie maker in the past.. but can anyone recommend anything better for the editing/movie maker job (also don't want to break the bank)..

Cheers in advance,
Rob

 

[Fanum]

What do you want to do that Windows Movie maker doesn't do, for free?

Serious question by the way

 

[Roberto]

Not an unfair question. I don't see anything much wrong with the Windows one.. that said I haven't tested it with larger files and longer type projects which I'll work on now I've got a decent camera thingy.
With my googling about there seems a lot of choice for this kind of software, so figuring there must be a market for it.. and wondered what other folks might be using.. and also to your point well would be interested in what makes it worth it more than the Windows jobby...

 

[Fanum]

I must have used a dozen or more video editing suites, from a fully licensed and updated latest version of the Pinnacle one, to a dodgy yet fully functional and updated Corel product (can't remember the name though)

I've also used a good few freeby ones and shareware editors.

I still make videos, for various websites and functions, and I tend to mix and match to get the benefits of certain features.......in all honesty though, I tend to come back to the MS free packaged software for the main bit of production, with a few addons that you can get from the windows update pages, along with Photoshop or Image ready for title pages and effects and making decent loking text overlays in the style and colour palettes lifted from the video.

Even with a pretty decent (built for CAD software and design) PC, several terrabytes of fairly fast storage and 8 gb of the fastest ram that my machine will take, the non-MS products all seem to have glitches that slow them down to a total crawl if I attempt to do too much with them.....some also produce really odd effects that just look stupid on You tube, whereas the MS Movie maker seems to integrate with YT fairly well, and renders faster than the others as well.

My advice would be to work with what you have first, learn the techniques and tricks, the file type manipulations and rendering settings, then only look for other packages to get the features you need.

For bog standard or even for good quality Hi-Def videos with some pretty neat and smooth effects, the MS stuff is perfectly adequate IMO.....having an all singing all dancing production suite can often harm what you're trying to do more than it'll benefit you, as the temptation will always be to throw just one more effect at your video 'because you can'

PS the other really really important thing is to hone your filming skills.....whilst the old adage that you 'can't polish a turd' isn't quite true, as a decent editor can make even pretty shit footage look reasonable, you will be able to produce a good film clip far far more easily if you have some quality footage to start with as raw material

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Windows live movie maker isn't a bad bit of software. Better software = more complex to use but you get more flexibility and can run more clips and soundtracks together as well as many more transitions.
For free have a look at http://www.zs4.net/features. It looks like crap but does an ok job. Another one is software called Blender. Most people think this is for modelling 3D objects and animations, it is but its also a hell of a good video editor. Movies are made with this software, it really is that powerful but it takes a bit of learning. http://www.blender.org/
Getting onto paid software Coral VideoStudio and Adobe Premier Elements which is a cut down version of Premier. The daddy of them all is the full version Adobe Premier but its £££££££ to the power of 10

 

[Loiq]

MS moviemaker will with patience be alright for making 3-5min video's after that QT pro it's about £50... is good

1.made by apple not some bunch cheech and chonks
2. cross platform
3. regular updates
4. will open and play most things

After that I would go on a course for basic editting, it's not the software that will make the film it's you and your ability to use the interface. Try if you can shows like "Canon Pro" "The Production Show" or "BVE" (broadcast and video Europe) they often have theatres and guru's to explain some of the stuff. However remember all software is unstable even the good stuff, learn to back up as you go along.

 

[Noddy made me]

Im also a fan of Live movie maker but .........
On my old Dell desktop Intel Pentium 4 2.5g with 1g ram it was crap kept freezing and crashing.
My new laptop has a dual core processor with loads of ram and i can chuck any amount of stills and HD video together with music and it never fails. As the others have said it has more than enough for the home user.

Edit , dont forget to show us some of the video though

 

[NeilF]

As a rank amateur Spielberg I have used AVS Video Editor for our home videos, and have been pleased with the end results.

 

[inazone242]

You could also try this site "www.videohelp.com/tools" plenty to choose from and plenty of reviews on the various progs available.

 

[Roberto]

Thanks for all the responses

Fiddled a little more with the Windows application today. On my little Netbook (with a weedy Atom CPU and 2gb Ram) it didn't like handling the big files.
I know of course a Netbook will have a lot of restrictions, but a final question in perhaps has anyone observed other programs in so far as if they operate more efficiently than the Windows MM program? I'm planning to take the Netbook on the road so it would be nice to do a bit whilst out on my trip.
Otherwise I guess it will be shoot whilst out on the road and then play with the videos later.

 

[Gipsy]

Thanks for all the responses

Fiddled a little more with the Windows application today. On my little Netbook (with a weedy Atom CPU and 2gb Ram) it didn't like handling the big files.
I know of course a Netbook will have a lot of restrictions, but a final question in perhaps has anyone observed other programs in so far as if they operate more efficiently than the Windows MM program? I'm planning to take the Netbook on the road so it would be nice to do a bit whilst out on my trip.
Otherwise I guess it will be shoot whilst out on the road and then play with the videos later.

I've been going down this road for over a year, and as yet I've not found a solution with which I'm completely happy, or which doesn't involve me spending more money.
I've travelled with a netbook, and the Atom processor just can't deal with the large files. Currently I'm travelling with an IPad, and I can edit video from my compact camera, albeit with a fairly basic version of I movie, but it does work. Unfortunately at the moment I can't get footage from my Panasonic Video camera onto the iPad, so I'm stuck with taking 2 sets of footage, one for on the move, and one for editing at home!
The ultimate solution for me would be to buy one of the new ultra books, and then be able to run my home set up on the move, but they are pretty expensive at the moment.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Video always has and always will require horsepower to work with it. There is no getting out of that unfortunately. You are dealing with larger files and massive computation to render video. An Atom/netbook was never meant to do this job obviously. Ways out of it are not to shoot HD video which will give the poor wee thing a better life or use something with i processor preferably an i5 or up.

 

[Roberto]

I've been going down this road for over a year, and as yet I've not found a solution with which I'm completely happy, or which doesn't involve me spending more money.
I've travelled with a netbook, and the Atom processor just can't deal with the large files. Currently I'm travelling with an IPad, and I can edit video from my compact camera, albeit with a fairly basic version of I movie, but it does work. Unfortunately at the moment I can't get footage from my Panasonic Video camera onto the iPad, so I'm stuck with taking 2 sets of footage, one for on the move, and one for editing at home!
The ultimate solution for me would be to buy one of the new ultra books, and then be able to run my home set up on the move, but they are pretty expensive at the moment.

Thanks, very helpful..

 

[greenviewer]

Have never bothered much with Video on the bike, but decided to take the plunge and buy a Contour Roam, which at this albeit early stage I'm very pleased with.. splendid little piece of kit it is.

In terms of editing, I've fiddled with the Windows movie maker in the past.. but can anyone recommend anything better for the editing/movie maker job (also don't want to break the bank)..

Cheers in advance,
Rob

well, if it still helpful for you.
I used to editing videos with WMM, and now I do with ShowBiz, it's really as easy as WMM and you can edit videos just by dragging video clips or photos into storyboard. Special effects such as transitions, subtitles and so forth are allowed to add to live up your videos.

For me, it's like the imovie succedaneum on windows,easy to make a youtube video and edit videos.