Video editing advice

[tomczak]

Could anyone point me to some simple but sufficiently informative resources to explain the video editing technology (formats, quality, encoding, compression, codecs, editors requirements etc). Similarly, any portable software (freeware or not) that is worthwhile.

If someone asked me a similar question about photography, I would probably point people to places like Cambridge in colour, Norman Koren's site or PWP resources, and for software to PWP, Faststone, NeatImage, ExifTool GUI, and maybe a couple of others, but not that many more.

Cheers.

[keithrj]

I have always found that http://www.videohelp.com/ has all the answers I have ever asked.

As for software I purchased Adobe Premiere Elements which does a really good job of video editing. Premiere Elements requires a bit of leraning but the results are very good. You will need a fast machine with as many CPUs as you can get - I would recommend Windows7 64bit with 4Gb+ RAM. I do not know of any portable video editing software but a google search may bring up something. Other software I have used are:

HandBrake (video coder)
MakeMKV (HD video coder)
MediaCoder
FreeVideoDub
MultiAVCHD (join video clips)
SmartCutter (split video without re-coding)
MediaInfo (Gives details about a video file)
Splash Player (about the best HD player around & includes a free version but paid version cheap and worth the money)
VLC (media player - plays everything)

That should keep you going for a while ;-)

[MikeG]

I use Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 - which is commercial software. I was unhappy with my first video editing software and replaced it with Ulead VideoStudio. I believe that Corel bought ULead - or at least this bit of Ulead. I had to upgrade to Pro X3 to be able to read some newer file types. Perfectly happy with it.
I see that Pro X4 is now available.

Mike.

[Bernard]

Michael Reichman just released a new video called 'Cinematography for photographers' , and he is always a good source of information.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/video ... hers.shtml

Bernard

[billp]

I use VideoRedo TVSuite (commercial) in Windows to edit, and imgBurn to burn the DVD image produced.

To cut my Tivo mpegs in Linux I use:
kmttg (to download from Tivo and decode to mpg.
dvbcut to cut the commercials out.
dvdwizard to build the DVD structure.
k3b to burn the DVD.

All of the Linux tools above are free.

[tomczak]

Million thanks!

I have another ignorant question about the video formats - but just the big picture: what's the going standard format(s)?

Here is what I would answer for photos.

While there are many fine points for any of the following: 1) shoot RAW, but never send it to editors - process it and edit in a good editor that you know well; 2) if you need to save an unfinished image while you process RAW, save it as 48bit TIFF - it has enough flexibility to be manipulated without quality loss; 3) any final/processed image to be sent to editors needs to be lightly compressed JPEG - there will be little quality penalty if you do that.

I understand that video has no RAW-equivalent format, but how roughly translate the above to video world.

[keithrj]

I think the answer would depend on the camera in use. You will find that all (or most) consumer video cameras compress the video using a similar format to JPG but with special functionality for video. This is specially true of HD cameras. The compression is lossy and the cameras usually give options for different formats and quality. Obviously the higher quality setting will require larger storage. When you come to editing video, most programs will need to re-encode the final edits to produce your final video. It is this encoding which is most critical because if you select the wring setting you could end up with terrible video. The best thing to do is experiment with a short clip and see what the result of the encoding is like.

Obviously you need to first select the best shooting mode for your requirements first.