Quick video editing software recommendation

[Tea]

Quick recommendation required.

I have a customer who needs a video editing software package. He is considering Pinnacle 8 DV to take the output from a JVC digital video camera, and output to DVD. Cost of that package is $279AU.

I have heard numerous horror stories about Pinnacle software and compatability and crashes and so on, what is the sensible alternative?

Thanks guys

 

[Mercutio]

I teach a consumer video editing class. I'm not talking out my ass here.

1. Pinnacle 8 and for that matter version 9 are not good software. I can't stress that enough. These are programs you give to people you don't like. They're both horribly unstable, which is not something you want when you're halfway through processing a 20GB AVI into MPEG2. Not only that, but within the confines of either program, you will find no end of audio sync issues, and that's not fun either.
2. Ulead's Video Studio product is quite reasonable and even a decent buy, but the last version I saw didn't include anything for direct-to-DVD. Ulead DVD MovieFactory authors DVDs directly, but has very little in the way of editing support.
3. S*ny Screenblast. Honestly, this is my personal favorite. It doesn't fully support making DVDs within the confines of the program, but at least they throw in Sonic MyDVD to finish the job. The interface is intuitive and powerful, but still easy to teach. Best of all, it doesn't crash. It's also reasonably priced ($100 USD).

There's a couple more threads about video editing and Pinnacle Studio here, too.

 

[Tea]

Excellent. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Merc.

 

[Bozo]

You might look into WinDVD. It has direct from video in to DVD.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

WinDVD Creator is essentialy feature-equivalent to Ulead DVD MovieFactory. Both have much less than full featured editing options, but good options for making DVD menus. It comes with the Plextor ConvertX I did a mini-review of a couple days ago.

 

[mangyDOG]

Hi Tea & Merc,

I don't know why you don't like Pinnacle. I have been using it for a few years now on several different computers and have had very few problems. Studio 8 with the lastest patch seemed rock stable to me, I am able to capture and edit at full DV quality monster 60Gb five hour videos without a crash. I find the software very easy to use and even a complete novice can understand the basics of the capture, edit and output windows with a few minutes instruction or a quick read of the manual.

My only gripe with Studio 8 is it's build in DVD menu creation is non-existant, but really there are plenty of programs around which specialise in this and do it well.

Cheers,
mangyDOG

 

[blakerwry]

I thought merc summed it up well in the beginning, from my experience with pinnacle several years back they have bugs... i figured this was the same now.

winDVD's DVD creater was crappy for me... it was stable enough, but it choked on some videos and created a coaster my 1st time out... spending hours creating a DVD and hours for the computer to transcode only to result in a coaster because of the DVD authoring software was a pain. This software went in the trash.


Ulead DVD movie factory disk creator... Crashed constantly with DIVX files and a directshow filter called ffdshow (my favorite mp4 decoder), after removing ffdshow it works like a dream.

Never tried the Sony product.

 

[Tea]

Thanks for the contrary view, Mangy One! I've never tried any of the various video editing packages around, nor am I likely to: moving pictures just don't do anything for me (as witness the fact that my cable TV hookup has been faulty for 3 weeks and I haven't bothered ringing up to ask them to fix it yet).

But I have to say that, given the horror stories I've heard, I think I'd be mad to sell someone a computer for the express purose of running Pinnacle. It sounds like a high-risk recipe for massive support problems.

In fact, Tannin did exactly that some years ago - built a computer for an intending Pinnacle user - and he did everything right, even going so far as to call the Pinnacle vendor and say "here is whaht I'm going to build, if there is anything about it you don't like, tell me and I'll do it anyway you want".

It took about 6 weeks and perhaps 40 hours of Tannin's time to make that dreadful Pinnacle card work in an acceptable manner. OK, it was a while back - it was when the Voodoo III and the TNT-2 were deadly rivals, and the system would have been an Athlon 750 or something like that - very high-end at the time, about $3000 worth, but if they are still anything like that .... No thanks!

The question is, of course, why do you have such success and others not?

 

[mubs]

moving pictures just don't do anything for me

Weird! We (my wife & I) thought we were the only ones in the universe to feel that way. While everybody, everywhere has a camcorder running to capture special moments, we don't even have one. Years ago, when our daughter was born, my brother took pity and "gave" us his antiquated camcorder which we promptly returned after shooting a tape or two.

We prefer stills. Maybe we're Luddites, but we're happy that way!

 

[The JoJo]

I'll vote for a "no go" for the Pinnacle also. Very bad experiences, lots of crashes.

 

[blakerwry]

wow, I just took a look at Ulead's DVD workshop.. looks like it has a lot of options and customization potential... a real DVD authoring program...

Comparing Ulead's DVD workshop to their DVD movie creator is like looking at Nero vs Nero Express.


BTW, these DVD authoring programs can be real CPU and Memory hogs... just putting together a DVD (not transcoding or making an ISO yet) I was using up >600MB RAM just from DVD movie factory... combine that with photoshop, vdub, moz, etc and I got ~900MB of RAM usage.

That's just something to keep in mind for your customer.

 

[Tea]

What's the go with CPUs for this stuff? Is this one of the few dwindling areas where Pentiums still rule, or do I recommend Athlon, same as usual? (Assuming that this particular customer turns up, of course - but it's something I should know in any case.)

 

[blakerwry]

I haven't worked with authoring a DVD using native DVD format (MPEG2) material.. but when working with AVI sources the process takes so long anyway that you just set it up and let it work overnight.. in the morning hopefully will be a working result. This is on a 2GHz Athlon. So even going to the fastest Athlon/p4 available isn't going to make it that much better.

Video and audio encoding usually favors the intel side of things, but price/performance wise I think the AthlonXP or Athlon64 is still a better value.

 

[Mercutio]

Has there been an update to Ulead's package? Last version I looked at couldn't even save files in MPEG2.

Newer P4s (Northwood+) are supposed to be faster for video encoding works. So say the benchmarks. Software MPEG2 encoding is something that, in best of times, a CPU torture best appreciated from the vantage point of one's own bed and a good night's sleep, and that's true even if your PC has dual HT Xeons.
Athlon64s support SSE2, which was where a lot of the Northwood P4's advatage came from in encoding.

 

[flagreen]

I do a lot of MPEG2 encoding from captured DV. I use Main Concepts MPEG encoder which produces excellent quality fast (2.0 hr movie in about 1.5 hours with dual 2.2 xeons & HT). It's editing features are very limited however.

Avid now has a free version of Xpress DV available for download from their site. It's not a trial version or shareware it is absolutely free. Avid DV codec, imho, provides the best quality around and the program is easy to use. There is no MPEG export option however. But you can export your work as a Quicktime referrence file and then encode it with Main Concept or even Tmpgenc for excellent results.