HD Video Editor

Guys, just wondering what video editors people use (don't know if this is the right forum to ask). I have tried using "Adobe Premiere Elements 8" and it is chuffing awful!
I hate it and after I thought it would be as good as their Photshop elements.

I like the simplicity of Pinnacle's "VideoSpin" - I have paid for the upgrade - but it can't output in HD just mpeg2 mp4, etc, which are good but not HD. Any better ones?

AK.

 

I use Pinnacle HD which will output in HD, but you need a very powerful computer to do it. Minimum requirements include a 3Gb dual core processor. This minimum requirement seems to be standard for post processing software, the Corel and Sony products need the same.

I output to standard definition mpg2 both to a file (for upload to YouTube) and DVD and I can recommend it.

Regards

 

Thanks for the replies guys - my comp should be enough, 3gb RAM 2.4ghz Quad core processor, but the Adobe Premiere is, virtually, unusable for HD. I like Pinnacle VideoSpin, so I will give their bigger program a try.

Thanks.

AK.

 

i use song vegas movie studio HD 9.0.
very good.

 

Not sure about this. My impression is that Pinnacle is not designed to recognise a quad core PC. I would doubt if the Corel product does either. My PC is a 2.33Gb quad core, 4Gb memory but it is seriously challenged by Pinnacle HD when processing a project in HD even though it is technically more powerful than a 3Gb dual core. Looking at the task manager while the application is processing the four processor panes are showing a duplicated pattern, indicating to me that the four core processor is being used as a dual core.

The way I have resolved this is make my project preferences is to set them at 1280x720 25p rather than full HD. The computer can cope with this, but it can't cope with full HD; it just crashes during the editing and post processing stage. It should be said that I output to MPG2 either to DVD or hard disc for output to YouTube. My TV/DVD player won't accept HD nor do I have a HD Blueray writer on the computer.

HTH, Regards

 

Pre HD I used Sony Vegas which I found easy to use. Now with an HD camcorder I reviewed the various software available. They all have their faults but I ultimately went for Adobe Premiere Elements. In the user reviews one of the problems with Premiere Elements seemed to be frequent system crashes but this can often be caused by the condition and configuration of the PC it is running on.

I'm running Premiere Elements on an old PC, a Sony P4 3.2 Ghz with HT. I doubted whether my PC would run HD processing but surprisingly it does. I just have to be patient whilst the processing takes place, but I've had only one software crash so far. I only use this PC for video and photo editing, so its not affected by other applications or internet usage. It's not as easy to use as Sony Vegas but I'm still learning to use it. Hopefully the more functions I use will not cause me problems.

 

Thanks to all for your input. I'm curious as to how you are running Premiere so well! I find it very difficult to use. The 'titler' I find particularly bad compared with the ease of titles in VideoSpin, Movie Maker, etc. Splitting clips is ok, but moving them about is very time consuming. Maybe I'm rushing it, but it does hang and 'whites out' with 'not responding'. Also the 'conforming clips' thing that runs at the bottom sometimes stops at 98% and that's it, crash. No, I have to say, I don't like it at all!

AK.

 

Premiere Elements is certainly not so user friendly or intuitive as my older version of Sony Vegas was and it is taking me more time to grasp the functions. As to why I'm not having many crashes - I don't know really but I keep this PC, which I only use for photo and video editing, in an as 'clean' a state as possible. ie all s/w as up to date as possible, no errors in the registry and temporary files deleted every time I use it. I didn't say before but my PC is running XP with 2Gb memory. I was sure I would have to buy a more powerful and up to date PC to run this but at the moment I am getting away with it and can delay a purchase.

If I'd had the opportunity and time to run other editing software to compare I may well have picked something different but I had to make a choice purely on write ups and reviews.

 

Coral VideoStudio X3, Fankly it does its all and far better than the others. You download it and try it for a month as well, fully working.

 

I use premiere CS3 at home and final cut pro (Which I'm really warming to) at work. I was briefly trained on Avid but as a programme thats been developed from non-digital era editing its nowhere near as intuitive as FCP or Premiere Pro!

 

And you're doing HD? I wouldn't have thoght you could do HD with Premier on an XP 2gb machine. ;-) You must be very patient! As to the Corel VS 3, I might give it a try for a month and see what happens.

Thanks guys,

AK.

 

I have both Avid Pinnacle HD and Corel Studio on my computer, indeed I bought the Corel v12 product on Ken's ('pennysteam's) recommendation one afternoon at the GCR while I was griping about Pinnacle's v12. I also had Corel Studio v10 for a while too which was a download.

After giving Corel a pretty good 'road-test', doing several projects on it, my personal preference is for Pinnacle. I find it much easier to use particulary during the editing stage of the process which makes producing a film a far quicker task. Editing is to a great degree simply a matter of using right and left mouse buttons and the icons on the screen are larger than Corel making them easier to locate with the mouse, both features making editing far easier. I don't use it for transferring data from the camera to computer, prefering the Canon product which came with the camera. This Canon product lists the sequences in timestamp order and uses the timestamp as the file name; both Pinnacle and Corel use an alpa numeric series for file names which, to me, is not as useful.

There was a time when, if you bought Pinnacle, you had to buy other features separately in order to make the application work with any degree of sophistication. That is longer longer the case. You can buy 'add-ons' if you wish but the product does anything and a great deal more that most users would want, particularly for those, like myself, who just want to make movies of railways, aeroplanes and the family.

Sorry to disagree with you, Ken, but at present Avid Pinnacle is by a long way the better of the two.

Regards

 

I have Pinnacle 11, which I think was the version that we were both not happy with as despite having ultimate most of the options you had to pay more and down load, also I fould while it supported HD it didn't handle the files verry well on a mediam to high spec box. Don't know about 12, trouble is they don't have try and buy option unlike coral. My main question on Pinnicle is what format can you save to and produce DVD's. Version 11 only had a few few formats and not verry flexible, while coral you can choose what format, bit rate etc.

Saying that i prefer Coral v12 against V13 when it comes to producing DVD's, on 12 you could take several templates and put them together to make a dvd. On 13 , they have opted to use a movie factorory package which is realy designed for simple movie production. If you have lot of files it insist on making ircons and scanning all of them whever you are going to use them or not, secondly it doesn't support their movie templates, so you have to produce each template to a DVD file and pop them in their own directory to get around these issues.

 

Ken,

I am using Pinnacle HD V14 and it’s a massive improvement over its predecessors and Corel Studio v12.

Input to the computer from the camera is by ‘Corel Guide Menu’ which came with the camera and I can recommend that too provided you want your folder names to be the camera’s date stamp and file names to be the camera’s date and timestamp. The Pinnacle functionality for data capture works but it isn’t to my taste in that the file names don‘t mean anything.

Data input to a project first requires that you set the default for projects in the ‘Setup’.

The input options to projects are:- PAL Standard, PAL Widescreen, PAL Progressive, PAL Progressive Widescreen; HD 1280x720/25p, 1280x720/30p, 1440x1080/50i, 1440x1080/60i, 1920x1080/524p, 1920x1080/25p, 1920x1080/30p, 1920x1080/50i, 1920x1080/60i.

Output options are to file (ie computer file) to disc (ie to a disc that can be played on a DVD player) to tape and web. I don’t use the last two so I’m going to ignore them.

Output to disc options are:- AVCHD, HD DVD, DVD, SVDVD, VCD.
Output to file options are:- Audio, DiuX, Flash Video, iPod Compatible, Mov, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-2 TS, MPEG-4, Real Media, Sony PSP Compatible, Windows Media, 3GP.

I think I should say here that I don’t know what all of those mean!

Now there is an issue. I have found that Pinnacle is extremely fussy concerning the relationship between application features and computer hardware. It isn’t as fussy as Corel Studio v12 which is so riddled with bugs that it ought not to have been marketed … the program manager should have been taken outside and shot. Stalin did have his virtues.

My computer is a Dell Inspiron Intel 2.33Gb quad core processor with 4Gb memory. It’s a pretty powerful piece of kit, but … neither Pinnacle or Corel support quad core, they seem to treat it as a duplicated dual core processor. Consequentially I have found that it is necessary to ‘trim’ the input data features to suit. Although the camera’s native format is 1440x1080/50i, in order to get the application to work satisfactorily I need to input at 1280x720/25p maximum - this was found after a good deal of experimentation. If I inputted data at PAL Progressive Widescreen (which is what I effectively output at) the computer would be even quicker I would imagine.

I output in SD. This is because I have a SD tele and DVD player/writer. My broadband is 7.8Mb/s download, 772Kb/s upload so it too really only supports SD. Uploading in HD to YouTube just takes too long, around 4hr30; in SD about 1hr30.

When out-putting to disc for playing on the DVD player/writer I set the options to MPEG-2, Automatic Quality, using the ’Create disc content but don’t burn’ option in ‘Settings’ and just follow the on screen instructions. I don’t write more than around 1hr40 to a DVD because the quality starts to suffer if I do and the ’Create disc content but don’t burn’ option allows me to play the .vob file on the computer as a proof copy before I burn to disc.

For upload to YouTube I output to file. Here I select MPEG-2 and DVD Compatible and let the computer just process the file. When uploading to YouTube I just select the file and let YouTube do any data conversion it might wish. The results seem to be OK.

If I want to send a file by email, I output to file again setting ‘File Type’ to ‘Windows Media’ and ‘Preset’ to ‘Medium Quality Upload PAL’. I have to make sure that the file size is less than 1Mb, but that works just fine too.

I don’t use any other options.

Hope that this helps

Regards

 

:-o there are some very detailed reviews here guys, thanks. Decisions, decions.... :-(

AK.

 

I might just jump in and hijack this thread a bit, what do people think of CyberLink Power Director? I downloaded the free trial last night and played about with it and on the whole I found it to be oh so much better than Windows Live Movie Maker. But it's managed to crash twice and it tends to hang a bit. Still a whole lot more reliable than Windows offering. I'll go and investigate the programs people here use but I'd be interested to hear what more experienced film makers think of cyberlink, as I'm a stills photter mainly.

 

Not tried it, sorry.

Regards