I'm looking for a decent software that can take DV-input and allow me to edit video on the Windows platform. Preferably one with lots of features. Any suggestions? My budget is up to $1000.

http://www.adobe.com/products/dvcoll/main.html

Might be good. I've always heard good things about Premiere. Never really used it much myself though.

Adobe Premier seems to be the software of choice for most digital editing. I usually lurk at videohelp.com and most prefer Adobe.

If your going to put your files onto DVD, then I suggest Nero Media Creator 7. It has a DVD creator that is fantastic for creating custom menu's with playable footage, and audio. Its pretty cheap too, around 50$.

Just sent in the PO for Adobe Premiere and a book on it. Hope it's good!

Premiere is to video editing as Photoshop is to photo editing. The guys at Adobe make professional grade products for REAL professionals. Of course, like any software of that magnitude, it has its share of nay-sayers.

I've used it, and it's pretty thweet. It's just a lot of horsepower.

Which brings up an interesting point: Adobe just acquired Macromedia. Ben Forta assures us that Adobe won't be killing off ColdFusion on his blog (citing that Adobe uses ColdFusion; that there is no server product like it; and that the Chief Software Architect of Macromedia says, "Coldfusion is Core DNA of Our Company"), but I'm going to start porting over some of the ColdFusion stuff on the company intranet to J2EE just to be safe (which isn't hard since it's just finding the right JSP taglibs and connecting them to the cleanroom servers).

I think Coldfusion will still be around because it's written in Java. If the codebase were still largely based on C++, I would bet my savings that ColdFusion is doomed. And I hope Dreamweaver doesn't die. Please don't make me use GoLive, Adobe.

Macromedia is revolutionary, Adobe is reactionary. I just can't see Adobe covering both the print/media and the web.

And I hope Dreamweaver doesn't die. Please don't make me use GoLive, Adobe.
Honestly, if MX 2004 is any indication of the direction they're taking; it might be about time for Dreamweaver to die. Not that GoLive is any kind of alternative.

Rybit, Take a look at VirtualDub. It may be what you are looking for; best of all its free.


http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Virtualdub

Virtualdub is great for splicing and converting. Premiere is a tool for making MOVIES - turning raw footage into a motion picture.

Oh I see. I have a question for you Palimax. I use Dvd decrypter, and Autogk to decrypt dvds and then compress them in Divx for my Palm pilot. However, i'm looking for a free program to burn them in VCD format, do you know of any?

Normally I can use Nero Media creator 7, but it doesn't seem to want to work for commercial movies.

I think you'll need to re-encode it into MPEG-1/2 (or re-encode it with a reduced bitrate) and use a tool like VCDEasy (http://www.vcdeasy.org/). That's what I've done in the past.

Well I compressed a 5gig movie into 695megs, so the bitrate was pretty small. I have no trouble at all putting the Naruto episodes into vcd format with nero though.

What bitrate do you suggest? I can play around with Autogk and change the settings if need be.

Edit: I'm using the Xvid codec, do you know of any other free mpeg1 or 2 codecs that work?

Odd. You're already providing videohelp.com links. They've probably got, oh, a couple hundred guides on the subject :)

I know, I just wondered if you knew anything else besides what they have. I guess it might be a bitrate problem, but i'm not sure what the proper bitrate for a VCD needs to be.

:p /shrug

Well, I figured out the problem. It seems Nero doesn't play nice with Xvid codec, but Divx works nicely. Although for some reason it wants to take a 685meg file that would fit on a cdr, and blow it up to 996megs when it converts to VCD format, so far I can't figure out a way around this. /sigh

TMPEGEnc is my answer to "I want this video in stock-format-X."
Virtualdub is my answer to "I want this video in custom-format-Y."

You can totally get a working copy of Avid for the PC somewhere online for free though you'll need to buy 10 or so new hard drives; the media management is totally worth the extra effort (and the hardware costs) if you ever plan to edit something, then rebuild it later.

Premier is ok ... its got a lot of rendering flaws though and crashes more often than one would like leading me to personally just edit shit on After Effects if I'm forced to use a PC.

Lets be more specific, what are your trying to accomplish? In this kinda industry there's thousands of routes to take to get to thousands of destinations: where are you going?

Everyone seems to agree that Cinema Craft's CCE encoder is the best for producing high quality MPEG2. I've checked through several forums and discovered that movie companies even use this product (though why they aren't using hardware products with that kind of money to encode is beyond me!).

The software costs $2,229 for the Professional version, but thankfully is under $100 for the Basic edition. If I really cared about getting the best software MPEG-2 encoder in the market, I'd probably send off a PO for the Pro version of this software.

From what I understand, you can use any format you want as long as you have the codec installed and USE a Frameserver like AviSynth to convert each frame to MPEG-2.

To see how it did in a blind test among products like Apple Compressor 1.1, Canopus ProCoder 1.5, Canopus MPEG PRO, Discreet Cleaner 6, Discreet Cleaner XL, Innobits BitVice 1.4, Sonic Solutions Transcoder 2.1.7, Sonic Solutions SD-2000, and TMPGEnc, go to http://videosystems.primediabusiness.com/ar/video_mpeg_encoder_shootout/.

Oh, while we're on the subject, I want to recomend a wonderful DivX/DVD player, that only costs $60 and can easily be region and Macrovision-free. It's the Philips DVP-642. Can play most DivX files (even Xvid) as long as it's not QPEL. You need to upgrade the firmware to get DivX subtitles.

"Though why they aren't using hardware products with that kind of money to encode is beyond me!"

You'd be surprised how fast a movie company can piss away 20 mill and not even paid for anything ... my friend's last feature which was a "low budget" cost $750,000 and didn't have a single paid actor or member of the crew and only shot for 2 weeks. The average feature is probably shot over 2 or 3 months and most of the budget figures you hear are whatever plus above the line, so not even including the actual salaries of the film producers, screenwriters, director, execs, etc.

The problem with the Cinemawhatzit, just like the article you linked shows, its too slow/inefficient with the average workflow. You can set FCP or Avid up to export to Cleaner XL and then render in Cleaner, saving you quite a few hours.

Premier is a really good PC based editing software. Its really easy to use. Its not used much by folks in the "buisness" but its great none the less.

I have a noob question about burning home movies to dvds. First my equipment:

Sony Handycam Digitral 8 model DCR-TRV460
Liteon dvd R/RW model LDW 851S
PC: 6800GT vc, 3.2 intel, 1 gig mem.

Conecting the camera to the PC with a usb cable. I have been using the software that came with the camera and dvd drive to splice the movies. I am not really happy with the software, its not easy to use.

All I really want to do is edit out some of the shots of the floor, the ceiling, the tops of ppls heads, and then burn it to a dvd.

Is there an inexpensive software app that I could use?

Also, I have one issue. I spend hours coping the movie to the hd, edit it, and then buring it to a dvd. Only to play back the dvd first few mins are fine then nothing. Look at the edited movie on the hd and it is fine.

Is this a problem with the software, dvd drive, or media I am using?

Thanks Wick

Most people I know just roll the whole thing out to a PC, then use the free Microsoft movie editor to cut out stuff.