Recommendation for Video Editing Software

[JBT]

I'm looking to get my wife some Video Editing software. Currently she uses MS Movie Maker... I'm sure anything would be an improvement right? Any freebies out there? Something under $100 would be fine if its that much better. I'd like it to be easy to use since its for my Wife. She not really techie but not to bad either.

Thanks for any help!

 

[ggadrian]

Lightworks is free and awesome, although is much more difficult to use than MS Movie Maker.

If she's willing to learn to use it it's incredibly powerful.

 

[gevorg]

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-editors-advanced

 

[Kerry56]

Sony Movie Studio is often recommended over at Videohelp as a good basic editing program. http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope

 

[JBT]

Tried out LightWorks, last night. Quite a bit over her head lol. I may pick up a copy of the Sony Movie studio, that looks a bit more her speed.

 

[Kaido]

A good next step up is Adobe Premiere Elements: ($99)

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements.html

One of the big features is the "learn as you go" built-in video tutorials:

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements/features.html

It also has a built-in gallery/album feature so you can organize all of your clips, instead of only working on individual projects like in Movie Maker. Amazon currently has it on sale for $69:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Premiere...dp/B00F8LJXKY/

For an extra $30 ($99), you can get Photoshop Elements (aka "Photoshop Lite") & Premiere Elements, which is nice if she wants to do photo editing as well, without getting too heavily into the pro-software stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photosho...dp/B00EOQZB4G/

 

[Lorthreth]

I like Expression Encoder 4 from Microsoft.

Free but can only output wmv, no h.264 output. Pro version has it.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24601

 

[sm625]

Is Expression Encoder 4 now kaput? The link certainly is.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Is Expression Encoder 4 now kaput? The link certainly is.

Link worked for me. The project is dead though. They no longer sell the Pro version, and it's not really a true non-linear editor for video like the others anyway. More meant for very simple edits, cuts, combine clips and transcoding.

I guess the question is what sort of capabilities does OP's wife need? WMM outputs 1080p h.264, and has enough basic features to suffice for the most of what I've ever done.

 

[balloonshark]

Disregard

 

[Muse]

A good next step up is Adobe Premiere Elements: ($99)

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements.html

One of the big features is the "learn as you go" built-in video tutorials:

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements/features.html

It also has a built-in gallery/album feature so you can organize all of your clips, instead of only working on individual projects like in Movie Maker. Amazon currently has it on sale for $69:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Premiere...dp/B00F8LJXKY/

For an extra $30 ($99), you can get Photoshop Elements (aka "Photoshop Lite") & Premiere Elements, which is nice if she wants to do photo editing as well, without getting too heavily into the pro-software stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photosho...dp/B00EOQZB4G/

I have a retail copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 that my sister-in-law gave me, she bought it at Best Buy for evidently $99 (sticker on the box) and never used it.

I have shot a couple of weddings using a cassette tape (minidv) video camcorder some years back and I've long intended to edit down the shots and present people with DVD's. I tried to do it and was intimidated by difficulties using some free software that came with the camcorder and a TV PC card I had.

Can I use my copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 for this? Scanning the back of the box I only see photos mentioned, not videos, so I suppose not.

All I want to do is be able to edit shots, maybe cut out some bad stuff and paste the ends together, intersperse some still shots in places, maybe a bit of text for a couple of seconds in places, especially at the beginning, of course.

I've already ripped the cassettes to AVI's, although I have to make sure I have that because a 2TB HD I have went bad recently, I have to see if I can recover data from it. I suppose I can always re-rip the AVI's via firewire, although it's a real-time thing. I still have that old camcorder.

 

[dbcooper1]

The video version of Photoshop Elements is Premiere Elements; they're offered individually and bundled.

 

[gmaster456]

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