Video Editing

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A list of Video Editing Software that is inexpensive, fast and good quality.

Pinnacle Studio / Video and AVCHD HD Camcorder Editor

Pinnacle Studio is the easiest to use video editor I have tried. You can cut sections of film out on Pinnacle Studio and save them. You can then drag the cut sections onto the top timeline, you then drag the secont film clip onto the same timeline next to the first film, this joins the two parts directly. You can add transitions between each part of film such as fade-in by selecting transitions then draging the transition you want onto the timeline between the parts of film. You can join as many parts of film as you like, and add as many transitions between them as you like.

On the second timeline, you will see the sound line. To alter the sound, click on the line, then drag it up or down to adjust the volume. The volume can be altered up or down at multiple places throughout the film.

To add music to the film, import a music file, then drag it onto the timeline with the symbol for music. You can click on the music timeline and drag it up or down at variouse points to suite the film. The orignal sound and music can be made to interact.

You can also add voice over and titles.

The finnished film can be saved in many formats. MPEG2 is normally the best as it will play on practicaly any device and retain ecellent quality. If saving in MPEG2, you can click on settings and set the size and frame rate, try and save it as close to what the original film was made, 640 x 480 or 720 x 576 or 1080i for HD video or whatever.

You can also save the film in MPEG4 format (the formate used by YouTube) that is compressed to reduce the size of the film and still retains a fairly good quality. This makes uploading and conversion to YouTube a lot faster.

Pinnacle also allows you to import and edit AVCHD video. The AVCHD video format is used by many of the new home Full HD video cameras. You can then save the AVCHD videos to any format you want, MPEG2 1080i is normaly best with great quality, but the file size will be larger than it was on AVCHD.

Price for the latest edition that works with HD about £60.

Large Image of Pinnacle Studio

View a film made in Pinnacle Studio by adding film clips, using music and original sound. YouTube Film.

pinnaclesys.com

Pinnacle Studio/ Film Editor image


AVI/MPEG/RM/WMV Splitter

AVI/MPEG/RM/WMV Splitter (formerly AVI & MPEG Splitter) is a tool to split, cut or trim a large AVI ,MPEG, RM, ASF or WMV file into smaller video clips. With a built-in video player, you can easily cut AVI ,MPEG, RM, ASF or WMV file by time or the selection as needed.

This is one of only a few splitters that can cut Windows Media Videos and MPEG4. Easy to use with a free trial version that allows you to cut up to two minutes of video at a time. Price about $35.

Simple to use, no visible loss and fast, but cutting can be a few frames out at start cutting, end cutting seems to be accurate.

Large Image of the AVI/ MPEG/ RM / WMV Splitter

boilsoft.com

AVI/MPEG/RM/WMV Splitter image

Free AVI/MPEG/WMV/MP4/FLV Video Joiner free
Free AVI/MPEG/WMV/MP4/FLV Video Joiner, a perfect easy-to-use video joiner application, allows the users to easily and quickly join more than one video file of different formats to one file of a specified format, including AVI, MPEG, MP4, FLV, WMV, FLV, etc.

Review: Great free tool for joining video clips together. Can take in most formats and join them as the same format, or most other formats. One of only a few that can also join FLV files.

Large Image

Website

Free AVI/MPEG/WMV/MP4/FLV Video Joiner

Video Format Information

MPEG-2- 720 is the standard video format for DVDs before HD 1080. This is the format to save to if you want to keep non HD video in high quality and not loose any quality. MPEG-1 will reduce the quality of the video but will have a smaller file size.

MPEG-2-HD-1080 is the new standard format for saving HD video in high quality and for DVDs. This will be the best quality for HD videos but also the largest file sizes. Can take hours to upload an HD video to the Internet.

MPEG-4 is a format for saving files at lower file sizes. It compresses the video to a much smaller size, and at times it can be quite hard to tell there has been reduced quality. Some Internet videos are in MPEG-4, although most Internet videos are now FLV.

FLV is the most used format for the Internet such as YouTube as it compresses the video file down to really low file sizes. If the video is of high quality before being converted to FLV, it can still be reasonable quality after being converted to FLV at a fraction of the file size. I usually convert any videos to FLV before uploading them to YouTube, as it saves a lot of time uploading.

WMV or Windows Media Video, is a video compression format developed by Microsoft. Only some video splitters will split WMV files so if you have WMV videos to be split, make sure you buy a splitter that can handle this format such as the Boilsoft Video Splitter. Some films that can be downloaded off the Internet are in WMV format.

AVCHD is a format used by many of the new Full HD Cam Corders that record at a resolution of 1080i. This is a compression format that allows you to store a lot of HD on the Cam Corders memory stick or hard drive. The AVCHD format can be burned to a standard DVD disc or a Blu-ray disc. Most of the video splitters cannot split this type of file yet.

I use Pinnacle Studio HD to convert the AVCHD files off my HD Cam Corder to MPEG-2-1080i, then I can edit the MPEG-2 files in any editor. There are now AVCHD splitters, but I have not tried any of these yet to see if any work fast without loss of quality.


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