 Poster: A snowHead
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Sorry to dissapoint anyone who thought this topic may get a little blue.
But has anyone got any advcie on video editing software that is easy to use for a technophobe, i.e. editing clips, adding music, captions etc.
Come to think of it any advcie could have multi-uses whether its home made ski movies or....ermmmm....'art' movies. 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I use Adobe Premier but it's definately a bit technical, on the other hand it is very powerful
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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We made a movie of a recent skiing holiday using imovie which is a great bit of software that is dead easy to use and can do all the things you are talking about. You do need to be on a Mac platform though.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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iMovie on the Mac is a cinch (it's free with the machine).
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Unfortunatley have not succumbed to the infinately better technology of the Mac, so Windows packages only. Thanks for the replies so far 
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Adobe does two versions of Premiere, Pro and Elements. It looks as if the Elements version is more for home users and less technical. They only make it for Windows, not Mac, so I haven't tried it, but it looks as if it has more features than iMovie, which is what I use.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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RachelQ, "Final Cut Pro" is Apple's professional level software (but iMovie does everything I could ever imagine needing).
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as metioned, windoews movie maker is ok. VirtualDub is also recommended but i havevn;t tried it as it won;t run on my compute (old operating system). Ulead is supposed to be excellent.
I really shpud find out more as I intend to start doig this kind of thing.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Thanks for the replies. Need to upgrade my PC anyway and a DVD Burner is one of the top priorities. I'll research to see if it comes with any software and post under this topic. Just off to pick my ski's up having put them in for a full service. Now can I resist not buying that Eider jacket I saw last week.....hmmmmm....no tlooking good.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Go buy a Mac mini (£339) and get iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iSki (OK I lied about the last one...) thrown in for free. Plusyou won't need to worry about viruses.
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This could be the killer app for the Mac mini I suspect.
Microsoft Moviemaker's actually not too bad at all really. You still need to author the DVD though but that's the case with most editors for Windows. Moviemaker is free of course as well.
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You know it makes sense.
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Just to hijack the thread a little but does anyone know if it is possible to transfer old camcorder footage onto PC then onto DVD?
Only output I have on the camcorder is audio and video (it is 10 years old and not been used for about 7 though it does still work)
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Boardski, presumably those are analogue outputs. If so, you will need a device to convert the signals to digital form, either a PCI card in your PC (you may already have one if you have an ATI All in Wonder graphics card or similar) or one of the many external devices available (usually connecting via USB2 for dvd data rates). The latter start at around £50 and go up to £200 or so, almost all come with video editing and dvd burning software but these can be relatively limited in their capabilities. Lots to choose from - check out Pinnacle stuff for example.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Having just spent the last two months evaluating which path to go down for exactly this question, I've really only three observations.
Pretty much any budget video editing programme will do a reasonable job (though the Pinnacle one is repeatedly slagged off as too flaky)
It can take DAYS to render a compilation and woe betide you using your computer for anything else at the same time!
And getting your digital output format correctly encoded for use on a burner and then usable in any other player is AAAAAGH!!! 
But I've gone down the Mac multi-processor route for the off-line rendering and will use my old G4 for the compilation with the full Mac Vid suite. But even with that, I'm going to have to buy a FW Sony burner to get the full encoding possibilities and that's on a PC! Even now I'm still trying to understand all the possibilities for commercial DVD/VHS/Dvid publication.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Masque, EditStudio rocks. It's far superior to MovieMaker and has many/most of the advanced features that Premiere has, without all the spot colour editing that no one's ever gonna use anyway. It takes a couple of hours (P4 2.4, 512MB RAM, SATA drive) to render a 45 minute DVD MPEG, and the computer is quite happy to do other stuff while it's rendering in the background.
If anyone's interested, I've uploaded a music video from my last ski trip to http://kibo.org.uk/movies/LaRosiere.mpg. It's 16:9 widescreen, 44MB, is set to FGTH's "Relax" and contains the F word once or twice.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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As Masque points out, the standard of hardware does play a large part in the amount of time taken to produce the final results. You need at least a 2GHz processor, and lots of disk space. I have a dedicated 160GB hard disk just for the videos I work on. Recent wedding videos resulted in 3-4 hours of footage that needed to be edited down. That's about 50GB just in source video files.
One thing I've found with Premiere is that if you don't add lots of video effects then it renders to DVD quickly, as the DV source resolution (720x576) is the same as DVD. All the rendering then has to do is adjust the bitrate. When doing long videos that take hours to render I just leave it rendering overnight.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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hyweljenkins, your link doesn't seem to be working.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Boardski, My DVD recorder (Mico espejor r311i, £100 from sainsbury) has analogue inputs as well as a firewire port. maybe that's worth looking at for you?
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hyweljenkins, Link still not working
Thanks for the info guys.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I don't do too much encoding any more, but a couple of things make life easier: fast HD (FW800 or SCSI), as much RAM as will fit. Also most people I know have ditched Premiere for Final Cut Pro. Easier, faster, cheaper. For rendering out, multi-processors are much quicker if you have the cash.
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checking through my downloads, Avid Free DV is the priduct I meant, not Ulead. Sorry about that
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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hyweljenkins, Nice clip!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Check out the SimplyDV forum for good advice and info. Pinnacle is cheap and easy to use but does not offer the flexibility of Premier. I have used it a few times to put together quick and dirty ski movies but personally prefer Premiere.
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Boardski, thanks, but it's not a clip. It's a pocket-sized feature fillum.
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You know it makes sense.
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Boardski, If you are upgrading your camera, buy a camera with DV in and out. You will then be able to copy your old analogue tapes to digital through the camera. You can also convert the analogue signal to digital for downloading to a PC or Mac through the camera without any additional cards. You will need a firewire input on the pc.
If you are upgrading your PC have a look at the Matrox web site their RTX 100 card includes a copy of Premiere Pro for not much more than the price of the software alone, and allows real time rendering.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I have to agree with people on XP's MovieMaker, easy to use if a bit limited with no DVD output option.
I have tried in vain to get to grips with Adobe Premier but the learning curve was way too steep for my little brain with limited time. I have now settled for Movie Edit Pro 2005 by Magix , cheap @ around £50 and seems very stable, and fast at producing some rather nice effects that my friends struggle doing in Adobe , dont get me wrong Adobe is the dogs bxllxos but I and others have found the actual program very demanding in learning time. You can down load a demo from the Magix site from what I remember.
Just my two pence worth
Fur
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Poster: A snowHead
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Boardski,
The problem you have is converting.
DVD needs a modern MPEG.
I use an AVI/DVD converter which you can buy off the Net for about $30:00 which converts all sorts of things but the most important is the DVD aspect
Batch up your files and this will take a new PC a couple of hours and pretty well kill your machine whilst doing it.
Then use Nero to burn the DVD.
Some editors convert already but I prefer to seperate these stages as I have more control if the thing blows out the burn.
I have used Pinniacle and it is ok-ish but can be a bit hit and miss. It is cheap though...
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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As luck would have it I take delivery of a new Dell PC next week and it's a bit of a flying m/c ( P4 550, 1GB DDR2, 250GB drive and loads of other toys). Is the AVI/DVD converter a piece of PCI hardware?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Boardski, nope, software. TMPEGEnc will do it, but I can't remember the URL to it.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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TMPEGEnc is excellent and there's associated tools. There's a trial version that's worth a go. However, I thought it was a bit hardcore and required the user to have way more knowledge about the underlying technology than was reasonable in most cases.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Boardski,
This is the one I use. It is cheap and simple.
http://www.winavi.com/
good for AVI to DVD converts and others.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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ise, there's an "express" version now - just click a few buttons to choose the input file and the output format, then press "Go". Job done. THe normal version was beyond me.
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That must be recent, I think it was October or so I tried that. I'll take a look at the new version.
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FAQ
