Video Editing Software for Travel Videos

August 24, 2009 6:42 AM

Can anyone suggest a simple Non-Linear Video Editing Software for Windows XP? One that can accept and output variety of Formats. For editing together Videos (MJPG) taken on a Canon Digital photo Camera.

I've been messing around recording a few travel videos on my Canon Isus Camera which seems to take 640x480 MJPG Video (30fps). I thought it might be fun to Edit some together and add music tracks to them (and remove the current sound track where is it just wind noise).

Its not really a serious endeavour so looking for cheap / freeware editing apps for Win XP.

I've tried Windows Movie Maker but it will only allow export as DV (huge files) or this .wmv (WMV9 proprietrary format?) and is a bit chunky - but I did like the graphic time-line you get with WMM compared to the editing in the dark of AVIdemux.

posted by mary8nne to computers & internet (4 comments total)

You can upload the MWV files from WMM to Viddler.com and then download the resulting flash movie back to your hard drive if having the movie in Flash will work better for you. My camera creates Quicktime movies, so I use FFMPEG to convert the MP4 file to an AVI for use in Windows Movie Maker. It's kludgey, but it works, and you can't beat the price.
posted by COD at 8:09 AM on August 24

Blender would definitely do the job and then some, but I don't think the interface has ever been accused of being "simple". However, the documentation is decipherable. Another option for audio and video effects would be JahShaka, (now CineFx,) but as I understand it, their non-linear editor only functions on Linux platforms so far.
posted by EnsignLunchmeat at 11:29 AM on August 24

Not free, but cheap (US$89): EditStudio.

Blender is wa-a-a-a-y overkill (it's really designed for rendering 2D/3D animation onto video), and obtuse to boot. You can kludge something up out of freeware bits and pieces, but it's ... well, kludgy. There's precious little in decent freeware NLVEs: the Wikipedia list may help you find something suitable. Videothang looks interesting, though with the caveat that it's said to be overly simple & crap.

Knowing somebody who got the 'free'/SE version of proprietary software with their video camera may be the simplest way of getting a decent editor for free.

One thing to note: MJPEG is something of an orphaned codec - it's ubiquitous, particularly in still cameras, but not terribly well supported natively by most editors. You'll probably have to convert it to something else - DV, high-bitrate MPEG-2 (yes, I know...), etc - for importing into an editor, cos most free/cheap ones are aimed at people with move video cameras using these formats.
posted by Pinback at 3:57 PM on August 24

Thanks for tips.

I've also just discocvered this trakAx program which seems to be more geared at Music editing but seems to have a lot of Video features as well?

http://www.trakax.com
posted by mary8nne at 3:01 AM on August 25