Video Editing Software?

[hat]

I have a friend who's getting into recording video games and posting videos on youtube. He needs some video editing software to work with. Shouldn't need anything too fancy, something simple and easy to work with. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[TRWOV]

If it's just to trim clips and add transitions Windows Movie Maker works pretty well.

I use Corel VideoStudio and works pretty good for me. It supports OpenCL so even my Athlon 5350 runs it pretty well (no hiccups when editing or previewing).

 

[hat]

OpenCL? That's AMD's equivilent to CUDA is it not?

The machine has a Q6600 @ 3GHz, and a Radeon 5870. I'm not sure how intensive video editing can be, but if something can take advantage of the Radeon it can't hurt...

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Sony Movie Maker. Its like Sony Vegas, just a little more basic, and not hundreds of dollars I bought 2012 for like $60 on Amazon.

 

[blobster21]

Avidemux goes beyond windows movie maker (as seen in the pictures below), it's free and not specially difficult to use too :

 

[Devon68]

Well you might want to look @ Power director.

 

[Solaris17]

If it's just to trim clips and add transitions Windows Movie Maker works pretty well.

I use Corel VideoStudio and works pretty good for me. It supports OpenCL so even my Athlon 5350 runs it pretty well (no hiccups when editing or previewing).

im with this BIG Corel fan.

 

[hat]

Corel is confusing me. It seems I have to manually type in a bitrate (at least for h.264, which should be what we want to use?? it is the most advanced codec available right?). Do I really have to re-encode it? It was already processed once when we captured video with the elgato we're using...

 

[kn00tcn]

of course you have to reencode, you are making a brand new movie by making edits on a timeline (unless you ONLY want to chop up an existing recording into pieces, then you can get away without a new encode)

that's also not a bad thing that you type the bitrate, just put at least 4mbit for youtube uploading & call it a day, it's better than some arbitrary % slider (unless it's the CRF setting)

h264 isnt 'the most advanced' if you consider bleeding edge h265, but yes you want h264 with a higher profile level (at least 4)

how fancy are these videos supposed to be? intro logos? music? fades?

 

[hat]

of course you have to reencode, you are making a brand new movie by making edits on a timeline (unless you ONLY want to chop up an existing recording into pieces, then you can get away without a new encode)

that's also not a bad thing that you type the bitrate, just put at least 4mbit for youtube uploading & call it a day, it's better than some arbitrary % slider (unless it's the CRF setting)

h264 isnt 'the most advanced' if you consider bleeding edge h265, but yes you want h264 with a higher profile level (at least 4)

how fancy are these videos supposed to be? intro logos? music? fades?

Well, h264 is the most advanced in corel, anyway... that I know of. I'm used to Handbrake, there was a quality reference slider setting that seems to make a lot more sense to me than just keying in some bitrate. I figure the codec knows better than I do when it looks at the scene and takes into account the quality level I set and produces a result accordingly. I think it will do variable bitrate too (I don't need 10k kbps on that black screen that appears for a few seconds, but I do need it for high action scenes)

He wants to start a gaming youtube channel. We're trying to do it the best we can... I want to see the highest quality results possible.

 

[kn00tcn]

the highest quality would be throwing bitrate at it... but what's the point if it's negligible & you wait 5 hours for a youtube upload

my friend has also tested 1080p gopro footage on youtube with an interesting result, if the source video is over 8mbit, the youtube quality is WORSE than if you upload an 8mbit or below video

you should always do VBR or 2pass when encoding, of course you cant do this while recording live (OBS, afterburner, dxtory, xsplit, etc), in which case just use high bitrate (consider cameras/camcorders often would use 20-30mbit to record their HD footage, sometimes using an older simpler codec like mpeg2 instead of h264, this is so that as little cpu power is used or to simply be viable on low power low performance devices)

one thing people overlook in quality is the fact that particularly adobe premiere & vegas by default (or used to by default) have frame-blend enabled on the footage you put into the timeline.... THE RESULT IS HORRIBLE! not only is the perceptual quality lowered (cant see moving objects cuz you have double vision), but the technical quality is also lowered since the codec is working harder trying to encode the added details into a bitrate budget, increasing compression artifacts!

so in whichever editing & recording tools you use, you want progressive frames, no blending, no motion blur, no scaling, no brightness/contrast, no auto processing, etc so that you're in complete control of the final output encoding settings which should be the only thing affecting visual quality

 

[Blue-Knight]

at least for h.264, which should be what we want to use?? it is the most advanced codec available right?

No. There are other superior codecs/standards in existence and even others with more ambitious goals being developed.

It is worth noting most are patented.

at least for h.264, which should be what we want to use?? it is the most advanced codec available right?

If you want quality and decent speed, yes.

But it is worth noting it is patented.

 

[TRWOV]

I just had a bit of a letdown with Corel. Apparently they only give you 5 activations but the thing is *brace yourselves* there's no way to de-authorize them, so it's just 5 and that's it. They gave me an extra activation because of my registered software history (have been using VS since before Ulead was bought by Corel) and because I contended that there's no mention of such limit anywhere but they told me that for the next one I would have to buy a support ticket

Hadn't run into that before because I always upgraded every two versions: I bought 5, 7, 9, 11 (from Ulead), X1, X3 and X5(from Corel). I didn't upgrade this time because people were saying that X7 was more like an X6 service pack (although the x64 version was tempting).

I'll buy X8, since I've tested several consumer oriented video editors and I feel more comfortable with VS but this just left a bad taste in the mouth. I'll make sure to bitch about it on their forums though.

Just a heads up.

edit: grammar

 

[Peter1986C]

No. There are other superior codecs/standards in existence and even others with more ambitious goals being developed.

It is worth noting most are patented.


If you want quality and decent speed, yes.

But it is worth noting it is patented.

VideoLAN x264 is an open source, H264 compatible codec so if you think licensing is an issue one could use that (although I suppose Corel etc. ship a commercial variant and already paid the royalties so home users should be ok).

 

[Blue-Knight]

VideoLAN x264 is an open source, H264 compatible codec so if you think licensing is an issue one could use that (although I suppose Corel etc. ship a commercial variant and already paid the royalties so home users should be ok).

I was just highlighting a fact.

VideoLAN x264 is an open source

The program is open source. But the H.264 is patented, and the program is clearly an implementation of it.

If you want to do more serious work with it: http://x264licensing.com/faq

In fact, there are some limitations of what you can do with those codecs, for more info: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/AgreementExpress.aspx

If you do not abide by their rules, even if you did not have not the intention... You may face legal problems.

I guess I have gone too offtopic. unwatching thread!

EDIT:
For all your video editing tasks: Kdenlive!

 

[Peter1986C]

Kdenlive is not for Windows, although Openshot version 2 is promised to get cross-platform.

 

[remixedcat]

What about avs???

 

[hat]

He's been meddling around and he seems to like Power Director.

 

[FireFox]

For video Editing i use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 / Adobe After Effects CS6

 

[hat]

This one's for me. I have some videos I would simply like to apply some color correction to... some brightness, gamma etc. Very basic stuff. What's the simplest tool for that?

 

[RCoon]

It's worth noting that Intel Quick Sync is a lot faster at H.x264 encoding that using standard x86 encoding. Provided your are encoding down to 4Mbps or above, the quality difference between X86 and QuickSync is almost identical. If you're encoding down below 4Mbps, say 2 or 1.5, then x86 quality is superior, albeit slow. Quick Sync is also about twice as fast as x86 encoding. Most encoding software supports it, including handbrake, OBS, etc etc.

We currently use Movie Studio Platinum at work, because it's just as good as Premiere but about quarter of the price. It just doesn't have quite such a pretty interface. It's also worth noting that DVDVideoSoft's FreeStudio comes with a piece of software called VideoEditor (link). You can quickly cut out bits of video without any fancy editing, and it repackages the video without ever converting it. It literally just slices the data out. I use it for the TPU Review videos because it's quick and easy, and preserves my 1440@60p 24Mbps video. I then let youtube deal with the compression unless I have time to Quick Sync it down to ~12Mbps.

 

[hat]

He's been using power director, and has been making videos for some time now. Now though, he also wants animation software, so he can make his own intros. Power Director has some, but he wants to make up his own.