Free Editing Software Suggestions
 

Does anyone know any good/free video editing software? Excluding avid and zweistien (didnt work on my computer).

Windows Movie Maker is free

Steven, You didn't post equipment on your Public Profile...so I'm having to cover down on both possibilities.

If you're on a Mac there should be iMovie (or iFilm, or iVideo, or some sort of "i" program that will perform rudimentary editing.

If you're on a PC there is Windows Movie Maker buried in the Accessories folder of the Start menu providing limited editing capability.

But do yourself a favor and download the free trial of Vegas Movie Studio+DVD and play with it. I think after you use it for a short time, you'll be willing to spend $100 on it for the ease of use and capability.

Be warned that if you do that, it'll cost you another $600 next year when you've outgrown the Studio product and want a full version of Vegas. ;)

The name iMovie was correct. Apple delivers with the Macs the iLife suite that contains iMovie HD (editing), iDVD (DVD authoring), iPhoto (photo collection management), iTunes (music).

GJ

I dont have mac and windows movie maker is only available for xp. I have 2000.

There is a free version of Avid Express DV that you can download from their website:

http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp

There are versions for both Mac and PC, and I have used both and can say that they are very nice, professional applications (for the price). The only significant limitation I ran into during the brief period that I tested them was the lack of support for DV-Widescreen, and of course there is no HD/HDV support (iMovie HD being the only free NLE that I know of that supports any sort of HD).

The hardware requirements are a bit fierce but nothing you won't find on the shelf at a place like Best Buy. The biggest one is the 512MB memory requirement. I ran this on a 1Ghz Athalon with about 700MB of RAM and it seemed smokin' fast, but then again I didn't edit anything significantly large with it.

The one thing that stands out about this product to me is the level of sophistication expected from the user. Most products in this space are aimed at the casual consumer and therfore provide a very simplistic interface. This is fine for the occasional editor but for more serious work you need more control and less distraction. Of all the free options, I felt that Avid was the most "professional".

To give you some perspective of where this opinion comes from, I started editing digital on Premier back in the day when postage-stamp video was the best you could expect, then quit for awhile and picked it up again with Windows Movie Maker, then Vegas, then iMovie and I now edit in Final Cut Express HD.

...is there any way to delete a post? :)

I should learn to avoid posting before my first cup of coffee. Steven, why doesn't Avid work on your computer?

Cause its for xp and I only have 2000.

Resistance is futile :)
XP Home Edition can be had from www.newegg.com for $86.95 with free shipping.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com

Or to put it another way, buy XP and movie maker is free.

Steven, you may have to pony up some money to get an NLE onto your system.

Check out this thread for other options:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=41978

Someone posted a new free editor here, not too long ago. I can't really vouch for it one way or the other, I've only played with it once... and crashed it.
http://www.jahshaka.com/

There are also a few open source options as well, but they are Linux-only so you might have to bite off more than you're interested in chewing:

http://kino.schirmacher.de/

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

I've never had any luck getting Kino to work, but I did run Cinelerra through a few test and it was decent, until I managed to crash it :)

I would say google search "open source video editing" you'd be suprised what you come up with. This is one i found looks pretty decent i was thinking about DLing it for my Mac, the great thing about this program is it works on a lot of different OS's
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2...eo_editing.htm

Win 2K is very rough as the 1394 drivers don'r work all that well. That is, 2000 is protective of it's resources and doesn't like to let the 1394 stuff work very well. That's why Avid gave up on 2K as an editing paltform. Legacy of NT related stuff.

Sean McHenry