I am not a pro but I am looking for something that a pro might use.
I used Windows Movie Maker and it was OK, for a free product.
I used Pinnacle Studio/DV because it shipped with my drive and it was pretty good until I outgrew it.
I used Nero and it was pretty good but when I upgraded the new version came with a bunch of shitware so now I am refusing to use Nero just on principle.
I am now using Sony Vegas and really, really like it. But it crashes under duress. In particular, I used it to make a slideshow of still photos. The show included about 900 photos and about halfway through it crashed, on a machine running dual core 3.0 GHz and 8M of RAM. For some reason, it takes almost 2 hours to render a high-quality .wmv file for a slide show composed mostly of still photos, of duration 12 minutes. I experienced this crash predictably and repeatedly for slide shows over a certain size. If the video duration is about 40 minutes, it crashes about halfway through, maybe 3 hours of render time. I had to break them up (If my source is all .wmv files instead of stills, then the rendering process is much, much faster and I have never had it crash doing that.)
Can you recommend a product that has the functionality similar to Vegas but is more robust? (Vegas cost me under $100.)
I’ve not tried it personally, but Lightworks is a professional level editor that the designers are now making open source.
One question though, is the version of Sony Vegas you’re using 32 or 64 bit? If you’re running the 32 bit version it may have problems with addressing some of your ram (I assume you meant 8G not 8M ?) I do some amateur rendering, and some of that software has the same problem if you don’t use the 64 bit versions.
Thanks for the response. I do run 64-bit Vista Home Premium, and I do not believe there is a 64-bit version of Vegas. (I did indeed mean 8G. When I bought my first computer, I spent $200 to upgrade the memory by adding 2M, and I mean M, so sometimes I forget that it’s the year 2011. :))
After looking at some reviews I decided I would try CyberLink PowerDirector 9 Ultra, which has direct support for 64-bit. I will let you know how that works out. At first glance it looks pretty good but I don’t like the transition library as much as Vegas’s.
But I am also interested in following Lightsource, thanks for that. It doesn’t hurt to have more than one tool in the box.
I use Edius. It has been in development for a long time, and has changed hands a few times, but currently it is owned by Grass Valley, the top broadcast equipment manufacturer - which should give you some idea of the stability of the product. They make an entry-level version called Edius Neo, but I’ve never looked at it.
Edius works well for me because I edit concerts. I shoot with 3 or more cameras, and Edius lets me sync all of them on the timeline, then go into “Multicam” mode. The screen is split to show me all my sources and a preview at the same time, so I can start the video rolling, then select the source on the number keypad switching from camera to camera just like I was switching a live show.
Also, it lets me mix resolutions and media formats in the same project. So one of my cameras is HDV, another is AVCHD on an SD card, the third is yet another format and I don’t have to transcode anything.
One other feature that makes me love this software is it’s “Proxy” mode. I’m cutting three 1080i HD sources - but my hard drive system is not fast enough to serve three HD streams at once. So after setting up a project, Edius renders a lower res proxy version that will show all three cameras at full frame rate. At any point, I can switch between the proxy and full res versions. This lets me edit a 3 camera HD show on a Core2 Duo laptop.
Anyway, that is what I edit on. I’ve tried other editing software, but have not found anything I like better. For me, raw speed is what is most important.