Choosing a video editor

October 14, 2008 7:23 AM

We have 10 hours of Mini-DV tapes (interviews made during my wife's PhD research) and we're looking for a video editing software to edit them into a 1-2 hour DVD. We'll have to add subtitles and to clean noisy audio and video. What would be the best video software to do that? More detailed specs follow.

- User-friendly: we're newbies at video editing
- Under €200
- Windows Vista
- The target audience consists in the few fellow researchers interested in the topic. No need for sophisticated video effects.
- Subtitles: the interviews will all be subtitled so the subtitling feature should be easy to set up. The subtitles will have to mix two character sets (French and Vietnamese).
- Audio and video correction: filming conditions were poor (handheld camcorder, indoors, low light, background noise). Not expecting magic there, but some minimal cleaning ability would be nice.
Software I've considered so far: Adobe Premiere Elements 7, Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate, Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Pro Pack, Cyberlink PowerDirector 7. However, the reviews I've seen rarely talk about the subtitle aspect (except for PowerDirector) and before test driving a bunch a crippled trial versions I'd like to hear suggestions from more experienced people.

posted by elgilito to media & arts (3 comments total)

Adobe Premiere Elements is your friend for this. It's available in the U.S. for $99, in the U.K. for £67.98. Inexpensive, but incredibly powerful. And not a steep learning curve.

Another option -- and one that I used this very weekend for a stack of mini-DVs -- is Ulead VideoStudio Editing 9.0 SE. This software was packaged with an SIIG Firewire card and worked much better than any pack-in solution ought.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:51 AM on October 14, 2008

My first real video editing software was Pinnacle Studio. For what it is, it was great. However, I have not used it since version 8 and I expect it has probably become bloated by version 12. Even the last version I used would do all of the things you are looking for, though, so unless they've removed features it should work well for you.

Other than that I have not personally used any of the other software you mentioned, but from talking with editor friends, Vegas is probably a bit above the level you're looking for.
posted by joshrholloway at 7:53 AM on October 14, 2008

Sony Vegas Video [wikipedia] is wonderful; and cheap [newegg]. I can't speak to its auto-cleaning ability however.
posted by SirStan at 7:55 AM on October 14, 2008