What is a good digital video editing software package for the PC? I don’t need the heavy-duty Industrial Light and Magic package, just a decent editor for home movies.
There is one called Pinnace Studio (or something to that effect) that is widely available from Best Buy, etc. and has gotten some good reviews.
Personally, I used Adobe Premier before I switched to the Mac.
I used Pinnacle Studio 7 and currently use 8, I haven’t upgraded to 9.
What I’ve found is: Pinnacle studio is either really good or sucks royally, depending on the version and wether or not you’ve applied the patches. 8 with all the patches works great for what I want to do.
I’ve also spent quite a bit of time with iMovie on the mac and prefer Pinnacle to that.
Avoid Pinncale like it’s the plague! Pinnacle 8 (and earlier versions) crashed on me more often Nick Nolte on a bad night rimshot
It’s crashed on me while editing, rendering, starting up, shutting down, etc. I’ve tried it on two different, very compentent computers and had identical results, and this was even with the “patch.” The computers I used were a 3.0ghz P4 w/ 1 gig of RAM and a 1.6ghz P4 with 512 ram.
I really wanted to like thier product, it has an easy to use inferface and some decent options, but the stability created far more headaches than I would have liked (there would be times where I would get extremly pissed off, and I’m usually not one who gets angry).
Now I use Sony Vegas, though it’s surely overkill for what you need it for. Unfortunately, I’m not too familiar with other products around Pinnacle’s price range, so hopefully some of the other dopers can be of assistance.
Duderdude2 is right. I have Pinnacle Studio 9.3, and it crashes if I so much as look at it funny. It’s like some bizarre throwback to the Windows 3.1 or DOS days, it crashes so often.
When it does decide to run it seems pretty damn cool, but I hardly fool with it because it’s so frustrating to restart the program 5 times to try to get it to render 5 minutes of video.
I’ve gotta have a one in a million installation then. Pinnacle 8 is stable as a rock on my system. (guess I’ll never upgrade as I’ve heard nothing but trouble from 9.)
I haven’t seen anything easier and more versatile for amateurs than iMovie, and still continue to recommend it highly. Throw in a few third-party effects/titles/transition effects packages, and you’re all set.
I used Ulead’s VideoStudio 8 and it works for me. Captures, edits, titles, menus, transitions, audio tracks, etc. all part of the package. Been using it since version 6. Pretty reasonably priced too.
Pinnacle is definitely perfect for Home Movies, because that’s precisely what it was designed for. It has transitions out the wazoo, and most of them are godawful tacky. The titler is extremely limited unless you buy the extra special title add-on. The output options for the web are restricted to standard NTSC sizes, except for a couple of token PAL options. And it has a GUI that looks like it was aimed at 8 year olds.
But it’s easy to figure out, and as long as you’re not trying to make the next Lord of the Rings sequel you should be fine with it.
If you want the next step up in useability and features, I’d suggest you go with Vegas, probably.
I personally use Premiere Pro, but that’s what is called a “prosumer” level application (both professionals and amateurs can use it effectively) and I use it I suppose professionally. What I like about it is how it interacts with other Adobe apps like Photoshop and Encore DVD.
Professional level editors use things like the Avid.
If you have Windows XP, the Movie Maker that comes with it does an ok job. It was good enough for me to fix the movie that the “professionals” using Avid made for my command. The only difficulty I’ve seen with it is that if your cpu is underpowered, it seems to leave a diagonal line across the screen on moving segments. My 1.4GHz at home had trouble, but the 3.0GHz here at work rendered it beautifully. It also has very little control over what formats you can output to, but I’d just use another free program like Virtual Dub or something if I wanted to re-encode it.
Thanks for all the input. I’m leaning toward Ulead over Pinnacle right now.
I liked the looks of Premier Pro until I saw the price tag.
Good choice. In case you didn’t know, Ulead has a decent user forum where a lot of people can offer help or suggestions. Check it out if you can.