Video editing suite - help please

[jongrant4472]

Apologies if I stuck this in the wrong place

Hello guys

I have a Sony DCR-SR36E Handycam and am very impressed with the ease of use and the film quality.

However, I have been using Windows Movie Maker (on my XP computer) to edit my clips together, which doesnt support Sony MPEG-2 files. This means I have to convert the files to WMV files, which affects the quality of the pictures.

Here's a recent example of one of my You Tube videos to show what I end up with. The original video is so much better

video

An assistant from Jessops suggested I try a Fire Wire cable to improve things, Windows help centre suggests use of an S Video cable.

I'm beginning to think that a decent video editing suite will be the best way to go, since I intend to make regular videos as the new layout progresses.

Can anyone suggest a decent video editing suite that won't cost the earth.

Thanks

Jon

[wlfwrose]

Once the image is recorded on the Hard drive or memory stick it's quality is going to be as good as it gets. Dragging and dropping onto your computer is a direct bit for bit digital copy. Going from the camera to the computer any other way, ie S-Video will be a severe quality hit.

Any file conversion process that you do not have 100% control over will also have a quality hit. Most of those programs sacrifice quality for a speedy conversion. You will be best off finding a editing program that works with your files as they come off the camera.

Most of the programs have a free trial to make sure everything works with your setup. For a low dollar(pound) investment I'd recommend Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiohd

[jongrant4472]

Thanks for that. I ended up going with Sony Vegas Movie studio 9.

After adding a patch/codec to enable the MPEG-2 audio, I got my first video edited and posted.



It's still a bit rough and ready, I still have a lot to learn about rendering and all the other features, but practice makes perfect.

Jon

[chock]

Depends what you regard as 'costing the Earth' . You can buy converter programs that will turn MPEG-2 into lots of different formats and even find one or two freebie converters that will do it, just search 'MPEG-2 converter' on Google and you'll find a lot of them. However, don't expect miracles from the freebie ones.

If you want to actually edit your videos and/or add special effects, then you are probably looking at getting something like Abobe's Premiere or After Effects (both expensive programs, i.e. several hundred quid), both of those ship with Adobe Media Encoder, which is one of the best media converters you can get.

However, if that is too steep and you want to do it as cheap as possible but still use Adobe software (which is the best and pretty much an industry standard for high end video production), then I recommend you take a look at Adobe Premiere Elements, which can be had for 30 quid if you look about. Premiere Elements supports MPEG-2 and uses much of the same routines as its more expensive sibling programs but is aimed at making things simple, so if you have been using Movie Maker, it will be an easy step to use Premiere instead. Here's one place that sells Premiere Elements for about 30 quid (its normally about 110 quid if you buy it from Adobe by the way): www.amazon.com/Adobe-Premiere-Elements-OLD-VERSION/dp/B002IJA1DM

You can read more about Premiere at adobe.com and you can also download a free trial of it from there too by going to this page, although that will be the more recent CS5 version, however, it is not too different from version 8: www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?loc=en_us&term=Premiere&s_pageName=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2F&s_channel=Adobe+Homepages&siteSection=home

Al

[jongrant4472]

Sept 23, 2010 16:13:28 GMT -5 chock said:

Depends what you regard as 'costing the Earth' . You can buy converter programs that will turn MPEG-2 into lots of different formats and even find one or two freebie converters that will do it, just search 'MPEG-2 converter' on Google and you'll find a lot of them. However, don't expect miracles from the freebie ones.

Thanks for the reply Al, but I think you were writing your excellent reply just as I was posting mine - see post above yours.

I now have Vegas Movie Studio 9 and have just started learning how to use it - someone's already told me how to render the movie to get better quality.

My son suggested I check out You Tube for tutorials but It will have to wait a couple of weeks as my other layout, Sweethome Chicago, will be at Manchester at the start of next month.

Where abouts in the 'North' are you?

Jon

[chock]

Sounds like you got it sorted, so that's cool. Good to see another Limey on here by the way. And I like those trees of yours incidentally, they're very nice indeed.

With regard to where I am, I'm in the NW of England in a place called Hazel Grove, which is a bit south of Stockport (of crap football team fame). If you've ever been on a train from Manchester Piccadilly to London, that's the town you pass through when about 7 miles south of Manchester, i.e. the one with the enormous brick railway viaduct across the River Mersey which was built in 1840 and was the prototype for most of the railway viaducts that appear in several of LS Lowry's industrial landscape paintings. Apparently one of the largest brick structures in the world so I'm told. About four miles further on down a branch line that goes off the main line to London, is Hazel Grove, after that, the line goes into the hills at the start of the Peak District where you find Buxton (of Spring Water fame).

If you are curious, here's a nice video of a double-header steam loco going through Hazel Grove (and Stockport) here:

And if you are really, really curious, if you turned left at the roundabout which appears at 2:15 in this video, you'd end up at my house about a minute later:

I presume from NE of England, and the Sunderland badge, you are up near Geordieland? I pass through there on occasion, as I sometimes work up in Scotland, where coincidentally, I train people on video editing and stuff like that. There are some nice train rides up to Scotland actually, some of which are in Railworks if you like virtual railways as well as model ones.

Al

[jongrant4472]

Funnily enough LS Lowery used to come to Sunderland on his holidays and did some painting over here too.

If you're at Manchester show, pop over and say hello - I'll be the one in the 1930's garb. Just follow the sound of a banjo - one of my operators plays Appellacian banjo music when he's not operating.

Jon

[chock]

That's next weekend right? I'll probably be going to it, so if you are there I shall say hi.

Al

[jongrant4472]

New venue

www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/5642-manchester-show-2nd-3rd-october-2010-updated/


Hope to see you there

Jon