Rec's on Video editing software

[giuseppe]

I used Pinnacle Studio 8 (came free with my video card) to capture analog video (via an ATI AIW card) and edit to DVD. The capture went fine. But the editing was terrible. It kept crashing and "losing video clips". Also clipped video segments lost sound synchronization at times (even though it was fine in the unclipped captured video segments). Finally, burning it to a DVD took hours as it kept crashing during the rendering.

I searched forums and it seems that most people advise either Pinnacle Studio 9 or Adobe Premier Pro. There is a major price difference but I am reluctant to purchase Studio 9 after such a bad time with 8. Pinnacle's web site does say Studio 8 should be compatible with xp, and I downloaded all there patches etc.

[RJ]

Well, Studio 8 is well-known to be buggy and unstable.

Anyway, how did you capture the footage ? Did you capture it as MPEG-2 ? I mean, the ATI AIW cards have a hardware MPEG-2 encoder AFAIK, and you can capture directly as MPEG-2.

What do you mean by "edit" ? Do you just wanna cut out and rearrange scenes, or do you want to add text and apply filters ?

For only cutting and rearranging, you'd better be off with the freeware Cuttermaran (http://www.cuttermaran.de/frameset.htm). If you want to cut framewise, you can couple Cuttermaran with either TMPGEnc (http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html) or Cuttyenc (http://www.psimarron.net/Projects/DVD/CuttyEnc/).

RJ

[giuseppe]

Thanks RJ,

I'm pretty sure it captured as an AVI file. (Recommended by the program).

Basically, I want to make little home movies. So mostly cutting and arranging scenes, but I'd like to be able to add titles and music as well as transition effects.

In Studio 9 any more stable? I don't want to spend the big $$ for Adobe premier but if Studio 9's is not a dramatic improvement in stability then I think I ultimately will. Also Studio 8 doesn't let you use mp3 or wave file from your computer. I had to keep inserting CD's for the background music which also sucks since I've converted everything to mp3's.

I'll look ito Cutterman. Can Cutterman be combined with any other software for the otheer effects?

[SonicVanguard]

If you'd like the stability of Adobe without the price of Premiere Pro, look at Adobe Premiere Elements (http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/main.html). It's a huge jump over the Studio line, has the stability and reliability of Adobe, and takes the steep learning curve of Premiere Pro way down for the average home user without taking away a lot of the power of Premiere Pro.

Dave.

[RJ]

Can Cutterman be combined with any other software for the otheer effects?

No. Cuttermaran is, as the name says, just a cutter. It can only be coupled with an encoder in order to cut framewise (and also to re-encode oversized GOPs).

RJ

[giuseppe]

Thanks for the tip Adobe premier elements looks like what I'm after.