[Scoobiesnacks]

Ok I'm a newbie to video editing so apologies for the basic question but how do you edit MPEG and AVI files without changing the format? (which Windows Movie Maker I take it seems to do)
thanks for your help

[MarkE19]

Just about all video editing software should work with AVI files without any conversion until you are ready to copy them to DVD etc when they do need to be converted.
Not all editing packages can however work with MPEG files, and some will still need to convert them back to AVI to work with. This will cause a loss of quality, but working in MPEG will do this anyway so the only real disadvantage will be the conversion times.

Mark.

[Scoobiesnacks]

What software would you recommend for a complete beginner then to learn the principles of editing? Looking thru other posts there doesn't seem to be much consensus on which is best. Sony Vegas stood out to me, though I guess it looked a little advanced in nature

[vonhosen]

Originally Posted by Scoobiesnacks

What software would you recommend for a complete beginner then to learn the principles of editing? Looking thru other posts there doesn't seem to be much consensus on which is best. Sony Vegas stood out to me, though I guess it looked a little advanced in nature

If you like the look of vegas but just think it is a bit much for you try the dummed down version Vegas Movie studio

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...ct.asp?PID=932