Software for a novice video editor?

[jezzer256]

Afternoon chaps

I am totally new to video editing, and want to edit a few videos from my summer holiday. I have all the files in WMV format already.

Can anyone recommend me and free software to perform simple edits such as:

Text Over
Titles / credits
Slow Motions (this is important)
Fancy cuts etc

Thanks!

Jezzer

[MarkE19]

Due to the high level of compression on .WMV files you may find doing any editing will cause a fair amount of PQ loss. If you have the origional tapes and can recapture I would suggest you do in .AVI format as this is uncompressed from the tape (assuming it is a miniDV camcorder). If they were origionally recorded in a compressed format then you just need to do the best you can.
Depending on your final media then you may find Windows Movie Maker will do all you want. It is a free part of XP & Vista, but the XP version wont output to DVD etc. I'm not sure if you can do slow motion with it, but you should find all you need to know about it Here.
If MM does not do what you want then you will probably need to buy a program. The normal suspects are Sony Vegus Studio, Pinnacle Studio, Adobe Premiere Elements, Ulead Video Studio or DVD MovieFactory etc etc. A search of this section of the forum should bring up loads of info on these and other programs.

Mark.

[Luffy]

hi I ended up with Ulead Video Studio 11 Plus It does everything you listed Im not very proficient with it yet but seems to do most things I can think of and top of my list is its easy to use
got mine at PC world for £60
Hope that helps

[senu]

VS Studio 11 plus as suggested above will ( amongst others ) do all you want.
But as suggested above by Mark, recapturing to DV AVI will not only give you immensely better quality, it will probably also allow the slow mo ( and any other effects for that matter) to look polished