Video editing software recommendations, gaming and general....

nero0410

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Thought I'd shove this up here as the other parts of the forum are quiet and it includes frapsing/dxtorying then editing the game videos etc....

First thing's first, the budget will be up to £0-80ish.

PC Specs:
Windows 8 64bit
AMD FX 8350 Eight Core Processor @ 4.01ghz
16gb ram
gigabyte 7970 ghz edition (3gb video memory)

Things I want to be able to do with the software include:

1. I like to record my gameplay sessions with fraps/dxtory @ 1080p, so for editing I'd like to be able to edit parts out I don't want, add commentry/special effects/intros/outres etc.... quite possibly upload them to youtube and also shove them on my mediaplayer to watch back. The more tools to play with the better.

2. I would like to make/author/create/burn blu ray and dvd discs of my sd and hd home movies etc.... also have the ability to use menus with pictures, text, music and animated backgrounds etc....

3. If at all possible, be able to create 3D (not the red/cyan type, the newer type like I have on my projector for my 3D blu rays) mkvs (or similar containers), blurays etc.... out of my home videos, gaming videos etc....

4. I record TV from my tuner card on my pc, and want to cut out the adverts so I can watch my recordings un-interrupted when I move them to a usb stick and watch on my mede8er before deleting them again.

I have found these:
Cyberlink Power Director 12 Ultimate
Adobe Premiere Elements 12
Sony Movie Studio 13 Suite
Pinnacle Studio 17 Ultimate

I have read good things about the first three, but not really read much about Pinnacle as past pinnacle products have been a nightmare for me, that was years ago though, so I'm not sure what they are like now.

From all I have read, Power Director 12 Ultimate has a load of customisation options, and appears to be the best out there for the money, but of course I'm not sure as I am just trying out the demos of these programs at the moment and not sure which is the best of the lot.

I know about Sony Vegas Pro, but I'm not really in a position where I can spend £700 on a program, as I don't have that much, and I'm obviously not a professional.

Please advise on what best to go for and any suggestions are really appreciated :smashin:

Cheers

tris
 
I know about Sony Vegas Pro, but I'm not really in a position where I can spend £700 on a program, as I don't have that much, and I'm obviously not a professional.


Go for this. Can be found for much much less with a bit of googling.....
 
I've always preferred Sony's layout/timeline for editing over Adobes, but having said that, i don't like the look of those large icons on the new version of Movie Studio.

Either will be fine for editing game footage, i guess just trial them both to see which you prefer. I think the Sony one comes with dedicated DVD authoring software. No idea about the 3D stuff. In theory editing adverts out of a TV show will be a doddle in the time line, but doing this manually and rendering each time will be a PITA. I'd probably look into automated solutions for this if you have a lot of files.
 
Go for this. Can be found for much much less with a bit of googling.....

I have been googling a lot today trying to find the pro versions cheaper, but I can't find them for my budget anywhere.

I've always preferred Sony's layout/timeline for editing over Adobes, but having said that, i don't like the look of those large icons on the new version of Movie Studio.

Either will be fine for editing game footage, i guess just trial them both to see which you prefer. I think the Sony one comes with dedicated DVD authoring software. No idea about the 3D stuff. In theory editing adverts out of a TV show will be a doddle in the time line, but doing this manually and rendering each time will be a PITA. I'd probably look into automated solutions for this if you have a lot of files.

I have tried all the trials out now as I have spent the evening with them.

Pinnacle I can't find a trial version for.

Sony's seems pretty complicated looking at the layout with all the box's etc...., but every time I try to put a movie file into it it seems to lock up and not respond.

Power Director managed to create a 6gb mkv from a 3gb file, also it missed the sound.

Premiere Elements also created a 6gb file with sound, but the sound was way out of sync.

I probably need to look at some tutorials for them as it's the first time I have tried video editing software for some years now, hopefully I'll find something, though Power Director 12 Ultimate seems to have the most features to play with.

Edit:
Looks like the only difference between ultimate and ultra are additional content packs, not sure if I'd need them with the unlimited community effects available.

Maybe some more people with some experience of this sort of software can advise along with you two :)

tris
 
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I use VideoPad.

Picked it up after I was using Sony Vegas on some media course a few years ago.
 
The next person to vaguely imply any form of piracy (of software, in case you smart arses post a picture of the Dread Pirate Roberts) will get infracted.

Answer Tris' question or dont post please. What do you think would happen to a poster that answers a question "Where is the cheapest place to get Diablo III/ BF4/ Titanfall" with "you can get it for free on 't intermaweb" ?

This is no different.
 
in case you smart arses post a picture of the Dread Pirate Roberts)

You know us too well :rotfl:

deleted .. nothing to sea here ;)

There had to be one, and of course, it had to be you ;):laugh:

Erm, thanks.

Don't want to see anyone get in trouble, or lose any of you as AVFfriends, so best to keep it nice and legal the way I prefer it please :)

I best add:
"I'm not from Yorkshire." ;):D

Still going through trial versions and looking for what else is out there :)

tris
 
Aw, bless :laugh:
 
movie studio 13 is good, try it :) Basically same as vegas from what I can tell, the platinum version is the one you want. Youtube has so many tutorials

Vegas Product Family Overview

This ^

There are some things that are cut out from vegas but its still a great program. I wanted Vegas for all the bells and whistles.
 
Bah, the Sony one is the only one that loads up fine, looks more complicated and seems to lock up when I shove or try to open a movie file with.
I'm not sure if that allows you to create stereoscopic 3D from 2D sources though, just looking for more information, guides etc....

It would be great to see family movies in 3D.... well apart from the in laws ;)

Damn I don't like feeling like a 'noob'.

tris
 
You might want to take a look at MAGIX Movie Edit Pro:

MAGIX Download

Output with DXtory can sometimes be problematic though, it was patched recently though.

If you have the money to spend then Vegas or Premiere are great, personally I prefer Premiere, but it has a higher learning curve.

I don't really see much point in trying to convert 2D home movies into 3D, it is really quite a complex post production process and most automated solutions don't do a great job. Most of the time, the effect is also more an imaginary perception with home conversion solutions. I haven't seen a cheap easy way to get good results.

Power Director managed to create a 6gb mkv from a 3gb file, also it missed the sound.

Premiere Elements also created a 6gb file with sound, but the sound was way out of sync.

You would need to look at your settings for export. Matroska is just a container file type that is highly configurable. You have to bear in mind that MKV is essentially meaningless, you could have any codec under there. If you want to compare, you need to know what the original file is encoded in and then apply a comparable codec at comparable settings in order to achieve the same results.

For instance, if you had set up the MKV to use MPEG-2 and the original file is MPEG-4 then you are going to end up with a file twice the size. Or maybe you have the bitrate set a lot higher when you are exporting or you are trying to export out at a higher resolution.

When it comes to quality and file sizes, there should be practically no difference between most movie editing software, they all use standard codecs or can be forced to. Encoding times will also vary little, as again the codecs are what do the encoding not the software, technically. Performance will vary in the software when editing, however, any gaming PC should be able to hand video editing with no problem.

Audio synch problems are also probably the most common video editing problem. If the software is having this problem then the problem normally lies with the source material and the encoder that the software favours. Either you have to change the way you are encoding your source material or you would have to demux the audio and remux it (essentially strip it out and bring it then into the software you are using) however, this is a pretty timely process. If you are having audio/video synch issues and you haven't bought the product, then probably look elsewhere.

Really all you should worry about is:

* The software is easy to use for you and does what you want.

* The software is stable.

It is pointless going with something like Vegas, if it doesn't work on your system. If you are getting problems with the software in trial mode and it doesn't seem easy to fix, then try something else. That is what the trials are there for. Also don't read too much into reviews of software, most of them are paid for (much more so than gaming) even social sites are heavily influenced by marketing companies that offer services to write good reviews or even bad reviews for companies/competitors.
 
Audio synch problems are also probably the most common video editing problem. If the software is having this problem then the problem normally lies with the source material and the encoder that the software favours.

That's what i thought especially since he is having issues with the files in different programs.

Out of interest Nero, what types of files are you trying to load that are crashing Movie Studio? You mentioned Dxtory, are you using the Lagarith Codec?
 
It's mainly fraps I use, I haven't bought DXTory yet, just testing it and it seems to have a fair few more options for recording sources for the audio which I find useful as I can capture game/sound without capturing teamspeak people talking.

I use dvdfab for all my ripping, and that has an option to convert a 2d bluray to 3d. I find it quite good when using SBS, and you can convert video files to SBS format too.
The 3D effect is reasonably good, for me anyway, and I quite like the results.

No matter what I do, I cannot get the audio to sync properly with Adobe Premiere Elements. It decodes the 3.3gb test file I'm using for all the tests in about 30 minutes, Power Director takes about an hour.

I managed to sort the audio out with Power Director now, well I say that, I just tried it again with the same settings and the audio was there.

I've now managed to get a game video tested on the Sony Movie 13 Platinum following the in program tutorial thing. That was a .avi file.
The only problem is it still wont load my .ts files which I need it to do also.


I have downloaded and tried Magix and that seems pretty good.

The fastest at encoding on my system seem to be:
Adobe Premier 12
Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13
and
Magix Movie Edit Pro 14


Cyberlink Power Director takes longer than any of them, although on their site, they say theirs is the fastest at encoding :laugh:

Out of all of them so far I like Magix, Power Director and Movie Studio.

Power Director takes double the amount of time to encode,

Magix seems pretty good and user friendly as does....

....Movie Studio, and I like the simplistic way to get rolling credits, transitions etc in there, I clicked with that one quite easily thanks to the tutorial in the program....but I guess they can all add those in, it's just a learning curve which I don't mind. It's just a shame that Movie studio doesn't seem to like my ts files, all I have to do is click on it when trying to add it and the program freezes, don't even get to click on 'open.'
Same thing happens when trying to drag and drop.


That's what i thought especially since he is having issues with the files in different programs.

Out of interest Nero, what types of files are you trying to load that are crashing Movie Studio? You mentioned Dxtory, are you using the Lagarith Codec?

.ts files from my XBMC freesat recordings (backend is DVBViewer). I like to edit out the adverts then watch them on my mede8er in the bedroom. I haven't found a way to stop it recording the adverts yet....this day and age you'd have thought there would be something that detects when the ad's are on and cut them out with all the tech we have. Can't stand watching/havbeing to skip them.


I don't have DXTory installed a the moment mate as I have been using fraps mainly :)

tris
 
It's a shame that Movie Studio is freezing with the TS files, i'm fairly sure i used TS files with it a few years back when i was using a PVR to record Xbox stuff.

Good luck with which ever program you end up going with. If you do go the Sony route, let me know if you want some good project/render settings for Youtube gaming vids.
 
It is. I had a good google and it looks like there are quite a few people having problems with .ts files with previous versions of Movie Studio too which is a shame. They should have fixed the problem in later versions.
Might be a case of just a handful of people are having the problem if others are not though.

Been playing a bit more with Magix and it really is quite good too....still not been able to try pinnacle, I think I'm running out of trials to try now.

tris
 
Have you tried just renaming the file to .mpg? TS files are just MPEG-2, it might be though that the filename is tripping out the encoder detection.

Normally if you have ts files, I would recommend to use Handbrake or similar to just re-encode them into something a little more standard. You never know what your box is sticking in the headers of the MPEG stream.
 
Agree @nero0410 , you would have thought an app would be available. I just googled it, and this popped up - maybe worth a shot?

Strip the Ads From Your TV Recordings With MCEBuddy 2

No idea what it is, never used it, just google-fu.

I'd prefer to be able to do it myself with a video editor since I'm after one for my gaming video's, kill two birds with one stone.
Some of the softwares out there tend to have crap determination when 'detecting' the adds. I'll have to give that one a shot though.

Have you tried just renaming the file to .mpg? TS files are just MPEG-2, it might be though that the filename is tripping out the encoder detection.

Normally if you have ts files, I would recommend to use Handbrake or similar to just re-encode them into something a little more standard. You never know what your box is sticking in the headers of the MPEG stream.

I record with XBMC with DVBViewer as a backend, so I can see and change what it outputs :):
dvbviewer recorder settings.JPG


The other option for output for video/audio is 'Audio/Video PS (*.mpg)', so I should probably try that for a recording and see how it turns out :smashin:

tris
 
Nope, same thing. Still produces a ts file rather than an mpg.

I have tried converting them it to various formats with handbrake, dvdfab etc.... but it still freezes up with recordings from XBMC/DVBViwer where the other two are fine with the file.

So, so far that leaves Power Director 12 Ultimate and Magix Movie Edit Pro 2014 on the menu.
The decision is a hard one, as they are both very good along with Movie Studio for my gaming videos.
Movie Studio just doesn't like my XMBC/DVBViewer recordings, other than that it's fine.

tris

Loads of free exras for Power Director Here, just trying to find whats about for Magix and Movie Studio.
So much stuff to take into consideration, extra's like the above for the other programs would be good too.

What does Totalbiscuit and Yogcast etc.... use? I suppose it's the really expensive one's.
 
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