Anyone recommend a simple video editor for a novice?

[Fidcal]

I can save video from Dark Mod but how to splice together and cut out unwanted junk? Just wasted an hour with Window Movie Maker In Vista before realising it has no provision for saving your video; you can only upload (publish) to a website like Utube. Leastways I think that's what it was doing; it just hung and I had to crash out.

 

Downloaded Video Cutter - agreement confesses its malware and will be uploading info about you.

 

Any others?

[SneaksieDave]

Vista lacks "File | Save Movie File"?

[Fidcal]

Yes. Not even feinted out.

[Komag]

I'm certain you can save your video, but not sure what options are visible on your end. In my Windows Movie Maker in Vista it's called "Publish Movie" (either in the "File" menu or the big button near the top). When hovering over the button is says "Publish movie to file, disc, e-mail attachment, or DV camera". When I select "Publish Movie" I get a choice of where, the list includes:

- This computer

- DVD

- Recordable CD

- E-mail

- Digital video camera

When I select "This computer" and hit "Next" it asks for a file name and location, then on the next screen I can choose my quality settings and size - pick "More settings" and pick something good, then select "Publish" to save it

 

There's no good free editing software I'm afraid, I've searched into it a lot. Windows Movie Maker should be good. If your version is somehow nerfed, you can probably download the fuller version free from Microsoft. It's really a pretty good editor.

 

Otherwise you'll need to spend a few bucks, maybe $20-40, buying something off Amazon.

[Fidcal]

Thanks Komag. For a minute there I thought you said "Publish movie to file" haha! Oh! Oh you did. Excuse me a minute while I get my around that. ... No, can't. Anyway, just tried again and get the hourglass lockup which I can only get out of via End Process in Task Manager which leaves a line 'Publish Movie' permanently 'on top' on my screen It's superimosed over this.) I have to reboot to get rid of it.

 

By coincidence I was just reading the tech news and saw about this Muvee Reveal. It's £60 so I won't be bothering. But I took a curious look...

 

"Make crystal-clear movies using your photos or HD video"

 

Erm... So that means that starting with your perfect high def video you can produce erm... video that is not blurred by the software I guess.

 

"Upload to YouTube and Facebook in one click. " Thought we could do that anyway?

 

"Styles help you tell your story in just one click." Sounds like a TV documentary editing tool alright.

 

Yeah - here's my sixty quid, you've got me sold on it immediately. I don't need to know anymore. Sheesh, get a market man why don't you.

 

Guess I'll try downloading another version of Movie Maker. Thanks again.

 

But first, a reboot.

[Fidcal]

Well, I found a review that said MM 2.6 keeps crashing but I got it anyway.

 

Not compatible with my existing project so I abandoned that.

 

I created and saved a new project.

 

I imported two videos.

 

I dragged them to the timeline thing at the bottom.

 

Saved project

 

There is now an option to save movie on the file menu so I tried that. Hourglass crash same as before with lockup and that on-top line. Reboot to get out of it.

 

I give up on that. If there are no decent free videos and Movie Maker is the best then God help us in this video age. Guess most users get some free software with their camera?

[Bikerdude]

Fids, windows live has a later version of Windows movie maker, that is way better than the version that came with vista..

 

http://explore.live....ive-movie-maker

 

Its what Ive used to create my vids that I uploaded to youtube

 

- http://www.youtube.com/user/b1k3rdude

 

there is even a upload to youtube and otherside from within WMM.

Edited July 2, 2010 by Bikerdude

[aidakeeley]

This may be handy

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/

[Komag]

nah, virtual dub and avidemux and others just aren't NLE, can't do fades, or basically ANYTHING but hard raw cutting. MAYBE that's enough in this case, but it's pretty bleak. I don't know why you're getting trouble with WMM Fidcal, that's really too bad. You might try the old version for XP and run it in compatibility mode. And yeah, most people use whatever came with their camcorders, true. Look for an old version of something on Amazon, you can find decent ones for like $2-$3 used, around $6 or $7 shipped.

 

example:

http://www.amazon.com/Ulead-VideoStudio-Version-6-0/dp/B00005V25D/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1278118198&sr=1-8

 

or this:

http://www.amazon.com/Pinnacle-Studio-10-0-Video-Editing/dp/B000B7RBAE/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1278118444&sr=1-24

 

My only concern is why on earth is your system not working with WMM??? It's standard issue and usually works for everyone. It's possible other software might crash due to the same root problem, some driver issue perhaps. Do you by chance have the K-Lite video codecs package installed? That has been known to wreak havoc with different video editing software.

[Fidcal]

I don't know what codecs I have. I've more or less given up on this. These days I just can't be bothered if something shapes up like it's gonna take weeks to sort out.

[aidakeeley]

That's why I suggested VirtualDub. It's free, it'll cut and splice and ... yes it is bleak otherwise. But as far as I could tell you just wanted something to "splice together and cut out unwanted junk" -- won't cost you a penny and isn't bloated beyond those simple requirements.

 

It's like me with my simple request to get a simple 3D modeler that wasn't going to require an alien/arcana mind-meld... Settled on GMax -- and there is disappointment (animation bloat and overblown customization bloat... and the the ever-present fucking file format fiasco) -- but I can at least experiment to my hearts content with primitives and such now, so I'll be okay until I understand enough (and/or stick with it enough) to want more.

 

I still say if all you want is to crop clips and append them give it a look see.

[rich_is_bored]

Blender has video editing capabilities but given your past experience I'm not sure it's a suggestion that will be well received. If so then just pretend I didn't say anything.

[Fidcal]

I tried to install Windows Live MM (I think) but it said it could not install. No reason given. I suspected after perhaps it was trying to access the web. I have doubts about what this 'Live' means. Looked in Wikipaedia. Seems mostly on-line programs but badly explained (in fact for the average PC user totally obscure.) I don't trust M$oft and since they don't explain clearly what 'Live' really means I'll leave that. Strange why one should have to use a 'Live' version of a program that should work in the first place.

 

I tried Avidemux and manage to cut out a section. I think I also appended another video. It was a bit confusing but I saved the result. Oddly it didn't say what file format but just saved as 'test'. I added .avi to that and it worked but ran at two or three times the speed.

 

I'll try VirtualDub but I'm only going to give it half an hour. If it takes longer than that to load two videos, cut out stuff and stick them together and save a working result then I won't pursue it further.

 

Blender: I don't have that set up on this computer but no doubt will eventually. (My old PC is now gathering dust in a backroom.) My problem there (apart from its non-Windows-standard-non-obvious qualities) has been with the tutorials not the program.

 

Probably all these programs have some merit but spoilt by one reason or another.

[Fidcal]

VirtualDub seemed promising and I cropped a video and saved it. Repeated with another. But can find no way to combine them. In fact the Help says you cannot combine two videos. I can find nothing about append or add so what is one to do? It must be possible to combine two video sections or how can it be an editor?

 

I can make no sense of the two panes. They are unmarked but one I think is input and one output but I cannot comprehend how they work Open a video and it goes into both. Seems I can only have one video loaded at a time but I'm not sure. I tried copy a section then loaded another video and tried paste at the end but no go.

 

Now I only have one pane and it is vertically full height and I am unable to resize it except side to side. I cannot grasp the corner or bottom edge only the right side.

[Fidcal]

Found a VirtualDub tutorial which is a video tutorial. He opens a video then selects another from menu > file > append video segment. He does nothing else but that. Easy. Except in mine that is feinted out and I can find no way to enable it. I see his version is 1.7.3 while mine is 1.9.9. Why would the author disable this?

 

Search for 'append' in VirtualDub's Help. No such topic.

[Fidcal]

Seem to be plenty of tutorials saying the same. Obviously I am cursed or just a difficult bastard. I give up. Fuck it to hell.

 

Thanks for all help but I am not wasting any more time on this.

[aidakeeley]

Fuck it to hell.

 

You were on the right track. Don't know why you had the greyed-out append... are you sure you had the initial file open so that there was something to append to? Otherwise I dunno, man. Sorry to hear you frustrated after all the help you give out.

 

I just went and dl'ed the 1.9.9; pasted a couple of Monty Python "Industrial Shorts" together; It worked "seamlessly"... ?

[Fidcal]

By 'initial file open' you mean I had opened a video file and it was loaded into the program and showed in the pane yes. Then I went to the file menu but append is feinted out. Is that all there is to it? Nothing else to click, select, prepare, before doing that?

[Fidcal]

Just occurred to me maybe I was testing with the wrong sort of video? Can't remember what it was now but perhaps it only works with avi?

[Fidcal]

Tried again and now it's working! Why? They are the same two files I tried earlier - both avis. I cannot get it to feint out now no matter what I click.

 

Oh well, it failed anyway - wrong sampling rate. But these two avis were the two I cropped and saved out from VirtualDub.

 

So what does one do normally - load one in, change the sampling rate, save it, do the same with the other, then append? I don't even know what a sampling rate is.

 

Just had a quick look and can see nothing about setting the sampling rate.

 

I'll try again tomorrow - maybe I just got unlucky with two unusual videos I grabbed at random.

[PranQster]

You can try a live-CD with the video editor "Cinelerra":

http://cinelerra.org/getting_cinelerra.php

 

That way you can run the normally Linux-only editor on your windows machine without having to install anything. Just pop your video(s) to be edited on a thumb drive and load/save them from there.

[PranQster]

Also, check my attached screenshot of avidemux... Did you set the encoding options like my screenshot shows on the left side? Those settings work very well.

[aidakeeley]

Oh well, it failed anyway - wrong sampling rate. But these two avis were the two I cropped and saved out from VirtualDub.

 

So what does one do normally - load one in, change the sampling rate, save it, do the same with the other, then append? I don't even know what a sampling rate is.

 

Yes. Sorry you do have to look at the "Video" menu, wherein you tell the program what format to output...

 

*It defaults to "Full processing mode" which means it pays attention to the first 4 items on the same "Video" menu (filters, frame rate, color depth and compression {compression is the codec which you can further configure according to which codec you choose..})...

 

*Rather than using "Full processing mode", however, you should be able to just use "Direct stream copy" since I am assuming you are using captures that ought to be the same. This'll be quicker.

 

The same options are available for adjusting the audio output under the "Audio" menu, but (hey! what a nice default!) that one goes with "Direct stream copy" out of the box.

[Fidcal]

OK, thanks all. I'll take another look later.

[stumpy]

have you tried rad tools.

 

http://www.radgametools.com

Edited July 6, 2010 by stumpy