[Principle]

What is the best video editing software for Windows?

Something fairly basic and easy to understand. I have no previous experience of using any video editing software.

[TheBigM]

You may as well start off with the free windows live movie maker to get to grips with the absolute basics - might offer all you need.

Then can progress to either Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere Essentials.

[noise747]

I suppose as been said movie maker will show you the basics.


Cyberlink power director is suppose to be pretty good, it cost about £50 and you can get evaluation version from their site to see if it does what you want.


Vegas and Premier is a bit more of a learning curvre, but there are two versions of each.

Adobe premier comes in the pro version, which is very expensive or the essentials version,

Sony Vegas comes in the pro version, which is flaming expensive or the movie studio version, again you can get evaluation versions to try them

Which is the best depends on what you want to do, I prefer Vegas to premier because it don't slow the computer down and seems to offer more and it is not adobe


as been said, try windows own version first, the basic part of video editing is easy enough, just put a load of clips in order on a time line and stick a few transactions in between.

You tube is a good place to find out how to do things, i learnt a lot about vegas because of you tube, Something google is useful for.


What sort of editing do you want to do and what are you using to get the clips?

[c4rv]

Movie maker is free and pretty powerful in windows 7.

Main 5 paid for ones that I have used or come across are,

Nero - has basic video editing. Included as part of nero suite so you may already have it.

Pinnacle studio - Probably got the easiest learning curve and will 99% of what home users will want. However when they do a new release it had a reputation for being a bit buggy, normally takes around 4 to 6 months to get all the patches out. You can pick up an older version from ebay fairly cheaply. e.g. v14 for £35.

Cyberlink PowerDirector - I have been using this recently, interface is not to bad and the program works well. Also has hardware acceleration if you have the right hardware in your PC and has 64-bit version. You can pick up the latest version for around £30 from ebay.

Sony Vegas. I lot of people use this though I hear the interface take a bit of getting used to. Again you can pick up v11 studio for around £30 from ebay.

Adobe premier. Comes in several versions. Elements is the more basic version. Can produce very good results but I don't like the interface. Can be bought for around £40 from ebay

At the end of the day, what one person likes, another is going to hate. Most of them have evaluation downloads for you to try out before spending any money.

[horns]

Originally Posted by Principle

What is the best video editing software for Windows?

Avid.

Originally Posted by Principle

Something fairly basic and easy to understand. I have no previous experience of using any video editing software.

Windows Movie Maker.

[Principle]

Thanks to everyone for their advice, appreciate it.

[d'@ve]

Just to add a few words to this thread as I've been comparing PowerDirector 8 (32 bit) on Windows XP with PowerDirector 10 (64 bit) on Windows 7 64 bit.

I have an Athlon 965 quad processor and a dual boot system.

Converting 720p HD video (h264/mkv) at 11Mbps to DVD mpeg2 format at 5Mbps, the PD 10/Win 7/64bit setup was 93% faster. It did it 3.5 times faster than realtime and I was suitably impressed. Top end Intel systems would do it faster still.

[noise747]

For home use Vegas or if you want to get a bit cheaper Vegas movie studio. Powerful and light on resources.

Bit of a learning curve mind you, but plenty of videos on you Tube to teach you how to do things,
you can get a trial from here, sonys own website


Avid is the one that used in professional circles, but it is complex and pricey.

As been said above, if you never used video editing before, then maybe the best thing would be to try windows own Movie maker or what ever it is called these days.

Adobe premier is a bit heavy on the old resources and that is before you even render.

[asm]

If you are going to use the windows live movie maker then you may need to make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. The new version which came out recently makes extensive use of hardware acceleration. It caused all sorts of problems on my laptop until I upgraded the drivers.

[Frank1]

Just one point regarding the types of video files you might be editing.

Most modern cameras are using AVCHD codec which is good for compression but it is not a format for editing.
Most editors will struggle with this format even with a quad core/go-faster processor.

I have found a good compromise is to convert the footage to .dv format at the same resolution and frame rate as the original.
This is much more manageable by any video editor.
Frank

Anyone working with video files needs "ffmpeg"!

[c4rv]

Originally Posted by Frank1

Just one point regarding the types of video files you might be editing.

Most modern cameras are using AVCHD codec which is good for compression but it is not a format for editing.
Most editors will struggle with this format even with a quad core/go-faster processor.

I have found a good compromise is to convert the footage to .dv format at the same resolution and frame rate as the original.
This is much more manageable by any video editor.
Frank

Anyone working with video files needs "ffmpeg"!

I have been quite happily editing AVCHD on a 6 years core2duo CPU using pinnacle studio, nero and vegas . Why would I want to convert the footage

[d'@ve]

Originally Posted by c4rv

I have been quite happily editing AVCHD on a 6 years core2duo CPU using pinnacle studio, nero and vegas . Why would I want to convert the footage

You may have no choice unless you are only doing simple cutting and joining of segments. For more complex stuff, you may have to save partially completed work and re-load it later (sometimes in bits) and so recompress the video and hence lose quality. Keeping the original file and the project file helps but is not always enough.

For anything other than simple cuts/joins and things I can do in a single production session, I save as huffyuv lossless compression. 'Tis very fast and it works for me. But when I've finished (which may be several sessions days or weeks later) I retain only the source file, initial project files and the finished production. Huffyuv or uncompressed files are usually way too big to keep permanently.

[Frank1]

Originally Posted by c4rv

I have been quite happily editing AVCHD on a 6 years core2duo CPU using pinnacle studio, nero and vegas . Why would I want to convert the footage

Because it greatly speeds up the process of doing frame accurate edits and spooling through the footage.
MPEG has to be decoded "on the fly" into individual frames so in effect, the editor is already converting the footage.
Some editors actually convert each clip as it is imported anyway.
Frank