Comments on: Video Editing Software Challenge

Question: Video Editing Software Challenge

snsranch — Sat, 05 May 2007 19:54:28 -0800

Video Editing Filter: Does anyone know of free or almost free software that is even just a little better than Windows Movie Maker?

Movie Maker was fine when I made a movie from stills after my last AskMe, but for actual vid editing, it kinda sucks. I'm not looking for any special effects, just the ability to capture multiple clips and actually cut them to shreds and splice them back as I see fit. The ability to add audio would be cool too.

I imagine, though, that given the tool to properly cut up the vid I could use Movie Maker for the audio.

If it's apparent that I just don't know what I'm doing, advice there would be nice too!

Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks folks!

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:01:22 -0800

iMovie comes free with Macs, if you have a friend who has one. It is generally pretty well regarded.

By: drstein

drstein — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:05:34 -0800

Here is a list of a few to get you started.

I've heard good things about Adobe Premiere Elements in the past, and it's only like $100.

By: fvox13

fvox13 — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:08:10 -0800

Try to get an older version of something off of eBay. I got Sony Vegas 4.0 for like $30.

By: effugas

effugas — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:36:05 -0800

VirtualDub is what a lot of people use for video manipulation, though I wouldn't call it a full nonlinear editing solution.

By: filmgeek

filmgeek — Sat, 05 May 2007 20:38:47 -0800

Avid Free.

Avid's free software. Cross platform. Useable. 2 video tracks, four audio tracks. Not exactly 'intuitive', but a quite bit more powerful. And the right price.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:36:15 -0800

filmgeek, yea, that is definately the ticket. Still trying to figure it out, but it's obviously a great tool. (And free!) Thanks to everyone, if anything great comes of this I'll post it to Projects.

By: Inkslinger

Inkslinger — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:57:35 -0800

I was just thinking about this myself earlier today!

Thanks to snsranch for asking the question, and thanks to filmgeek for the pointer to Avid Free. I'll be trying that out as well.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 09 May 2007 09:48:56 -0800

Er, maybe this is a stupid answer, but I've gotten some good use out of VirtualDub in the past, which is open source, fairly popular and I -think- it's the kind of thing you're looking for....

By: billtron

billtron — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:44:23 -0800

I know this is a late post, but Avid Free isn't available any more. What should someone do at this point?