[profro]

Ok, I have a Contour HD and I'd like to edit together some decent movies from the footage. I am using an old Vista machine I have reformatted with XP. Its a Duo 1.73 GHz with 2Gb of ram. I have tried numerous free video editing packages and all of them have sucking on one way or another. I am currently trying a 30 trial of Corel Video Studio Pro and it seems to have melted my machine. Its sooooo slow now. I would like to keep the output format in HD M-PEG 4 with H.264 for uploading to Youtube and Vimeo as well as watching on my LG 42" TV via USB input. What is the better software package to splice together clips, add music, manipulate play back speed, and have effective transitions, and output to the above parameters. Additionally, is it time to step up on hardware as well? If so what are the better options?

 

[kidwoo]

Your computer is bogging. No software out there will fix that.

All these little "hd" cameras, helmet and otherwise use extremely complex encoding to get reasonable file sizes. They esentially use viewing codecs and then give a figurative 'fvck you' to anyone wanting to actually edit the clips without a monster computer.

Some of the freebies I've been checking out are Wax, and Virtual dub. At this point you want to tax your computer the least you can. Bigger, more 'professional' editing suites doe the exact opposite when it comes to translating complex files.

I'm going to ask the obvious though: how's it work with windows movie maker? Try it if you haven't. It's actually a pretty good little setup for free.

 

[profro]

I really, really hate Microsoft. Yeah I'll take their OS, but all the extras I stay away from (IE, Windows Media Player, etc.) However that being said I'm not a mac guy either. So don't lump me there. I have not tried Windows Movie Maker. Can it render into .mp4? If not, that may be a deal killer for me. I have a iPhone and a Apple TV, so it needs to at least create .mp4 files.

I am trying a trial version of Corel Video studio and I like the interface and control it offers during creation, but I'm not blown away with the rendering. I followed some tutorial and rendered this last night...


Sedona Sun on Vimeo


I'm not super impressed with the quality. The file size was awesomely small, but I want better quality.

But if I step up computers what should I look for?

 

[kidwoo]

I'm not too keen on the all the polyps that come with MS products either.....which is why I don't install things I don't want, or let them get installed .

But think about what movie maker is. MS is catering to consumer level electronics people who want to put together clips from their consumer cameras. They're also in direct competition with imovie in that regard when people decide which computers to buy at costco and best buy. MP4 is now a really common format for consumer cameras. I'd be REALLY surprised if you couldn't, but I don't know for sure. If you want, I can screw around with it when I get home from work. Or you can. I don't have it installed on my machine because it's relatively new but I ain't skeerd. It's also free and in wide enough use, it's easy to find information on.

As far as computers go, a faster processor will help your encodes immensely. A little more ram couldn't hurt either, and a good graphics card will help your playback speed. I literally built a computer just to deal with video encoding (thanks to binary visions for a **** ton of guidance).

 

[dump]

I'll add to the specs:
- A fast hard drive 7200 rpm to store/read/write your media (this is in addition to your main hard drive that your OS/applications are running on)