Video Editing Program - which one to get?
Discussion
jagdpanther said:
If you have a fair sized machine (see: powerplant) then Pinnacle Studio is for you
Other than that I can personally recommend the Powerdirector range although version 5 is a bit unstable
Other than that I can personally recommend the Powerdirector range although version 5 is a bit unstable
Pinnacle sucks, it's buggy as hell and we had it on a dual processor quad core 3ghz machine, and it crashed almost hourly.
So we moved to Adobe Premiere which does everything pinnacle did and more, and to boot it isn't released by a company that believe the paying public are their beta testers
I have and use both Pinnacle Studio 10 and Adobe Premier Elements 4.0.
Both are good in their own right, I wouldnt say Pinnacle crashes that often, but it has crashed, whereas Premier Elements hasnt yet. Premier Elements does more but I found it harder to pick up straight away. I find I tend to use a mixture of Pinnacle for some things and premier elements for others. I do however use them on a beefy desktop, I tried Pinnacle on my laptop before and it didnt run too good.
Also, Premier Elements is much cheaper than Premier Pro, and for home use, it seems like it does pretty much everything you'd want.
Both are good in their own right, I wouldnt say Pinnacle crashes that often, but it has crashed, whereas Premier Elements hasnt yet. Premier Elements does more but I found it harder to pick up straight away. I find I tend to use a mixture of Pinnacle for some things and premier elements for others. I do however use them on a beefy desktop, I tried Pinnacle on my laptop before and it didnt run too good.
Also, Premier Elements is much cheaper than Premier Pro, and for home use, it seems like it does pretty much everything you'd want.
Silent1 said:
Pinnacle sucks, it's buggy as hell and we had it on a dual processor quad core 3ghz machine, and it crashed almost hourly.
Perhaps your machine is just TOO powerful
I don't do a lot of editing but have no real problems with Pinnacle on 3.4Ghz Pentium 4. Haven't used the others that folk have recommended so can't compare. I use Adobe Premiere Pro and although its a few quid, it does not crash, does everything i could ever want, and always generates good results.
I've used Sony's Vegas product too which is also good, and perhaps a little simpler to get the hang of than Premiere.
If you're planning on just doing a one off film, use the cheap/free stuff, if you plan on doing films regularly, it might be worth thinking about Premiere.
If you have a mac, imovie is free and surprisingly good.
HTH
edited to add a few e's
I've used Sony's Vegas product too which is also good, and perhaps a little simpler to get the hang of than Premiere.
If you're planning on just doing a one off film, use the cheap/free stuff, if you plan on doing films regularly, it might be worth thinking about Premiere.
If you have a mac, imovie is free and surprisingly good.
HTH
edited to add a few e's
Edited by gregorio! on Thursday 26th April 10:27
Depends what you want to do.
I wanted to combine a bunch of different shots so that the audio from one shot went over the visuals from another, so you could cut away to a close up of something you were talking about. Ulead and all that lot were rubbish at that, but fine if all you wanted to do was just jam a bunch of shots in sequence and write them to a DVD.
Adobe's product looks very good, but I used Jahshaka (www.jahshaka.org), which is free and pretty sophisticated, if slightly flaky round the edges like most open source projects. If you're willing to spend some time experimenting, it's quite a good project. If you just want to fire up something and pop out a quick DVD, it's no good whatsoever.
When I find time to do some more video, I'll probably buy Premiere Elements - though I'll probably download the latest version of Jahshaka first and see how far it's got.
I wanted to combine a bunch of different shots so that the audio from one shot went over the visuals from another, so you could cut away to a close up of something you were talking about. Ulead and all that lot were rubbish at that, but fine if all you wanted to do was just jam a bunch of shots in sequence and write them to a DVD.
Adobe's product looks very good, but I used Jahshaka (www.jahshaka.org), which is free and pretty sophisticated, if slightly flaky round the edges like most open source projects. If you're willing to spend some time experimenting, it's quite a good project. If you just want to fire up something and pop out a quick DVD, it's no good whatsoever.
When I find time to do some more video, I'll probably buy Premiere Elements - though I'll probably download the latest version of Jahshaka first and see how far it's got.
I normally use Pinnacle studio 9.4. I also have used windows movie maker and premier pro 1.5.
I find Pinnacle and Movie maker both very good and easy to use, one does a few things the other doesn't and vice versa.
I've just started playing with Premier Pro, but find it too difficult to use. I can see it has soo much potential but, as with Photoshop, is too complicated.
However it does run the smoothest of the three, with Pinnacle letting me down the most with things like freezing and sound and image going out of sinc.
I find Pinnacle and Movie maker both very good and easy to use, one does a few things the other doesn't and vice versa.
I've just started playing with Premier Pro, but find it too difficult to use. I can see it has soo much potential but, as with Photoshop, is too complicated.
However it does run the smoothest of the three, with Pinnacle letting me down the most with things like freezing and sound and image going out of sinc.
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