Hi everyone.
Which software would be most appropriate for my use case described below? I'm trying to pick one of current X-mas deals:
- PowerDirector 15 Ultimate (Download version) - Incl. Premium Effects and Templates (CyberLink Cloud 25 GB (12 months), 15 Music Tracks & Sound Effects from Muserk, AudioDirector 7 Ultra, Holiday Pack Vol.8 for PowerDirector) = €76.78
- Adobe Premiere Elements = €70.18
- Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X9.5 = €64.99
- VEGAS Movie Studio 13 Platinum = €79.99 (it seems, this is not worth it - outdated and confusing UI, unintuitive workflow, although seems to be capable of doing its job, once you get used to it)
My use case:
Often friends bring a bunch of videos and photos and ask to create single video as soon as possible. The typical problems are that all those images and videos come from different devices, which means different formats, different quality, different brightness, colors, white balance, audio quality, video and audio noise etc. Of course, it would be a difficult task to create something professional out of that mess, but it would be great to have at least something coherent.
Ideally, I would want some preset or a guide which would initially normalize the image and sound to make it uniform throughout the entire timeline. Most probably, I still will have to tweak each clip manually, but it would help a lot if the software would create some basic setup of filter parameters to begin with.
I have assembled full list of requirements - they seem pretty basic but I have seen some software failing badly in one or other category, which is a shame because what's the use of advanced features like 360 degree videos, 4K and multicam if there are no basic tools to clean up audio and video noise or if the workflow is cumbersome.
Here goes the full list of my requirements for my perfect video editor (maybe an utopia):
- for occasional use - workflow and basic UI controls are intuitive, not too much tied to specific shortcut combinations (I will forget them if I use the program only once a month or so); supports usual key combinations for scrolling/zooming in the timeline, undo/redo, copy/cut/paste (I don't like when mousewheel and Ctrl + mousewheel does not work as expected)
- ideally, it would be great to have some basic preset which normalizes the result; that is, makes all audio clips the same volume, adjusts white balance and brightness of each video clip to be "optimal", and then provides controls to tweak each clip as necessary, in case the "optimal guess" was not quite right
- timeline based, non-destructive (non-linear editing)
- imports most popular video shooting formats and containers - AVCHD, XAVC, mp4, MOV (both progressive and interlaced; up to 1440x1080 and 1920x1080; I don't really care about 4K yet), mp3, jpg, png. RAW images most probably are not expected, and also Apple's .mov are less likely because iPhone is not common where I live because of its high price (Eastern Europe)
- it is enough to have just a single format mp4 H.264 (AVC) + AAC as export, but it's important to get it right, dealing also with anamorphic pixel aspect ratio because that's an easy way to achieve good look with less size and faster encoding (1440x1080 with 1.3333 px aspect instead of full 1920x1080)
- exports audio track for more advanced editing in another software (noise cleanup etc.) and importing back
- allows inserting still images and stretching them to be displayed for certain time (also it would be great to be able to stretch a single source video frame over some timeline frames to get a "freeze" effect)
- has simple tools to create a slideshow video from series of images (ideally - create something basic with a few clicks and then tweak)
- text titles with keyframing
- simple transitions (crossfade, crossfade with static background color)
- panning, cropping with keyframes
- per-clip effects with keyframes, per-track effects with keyframes basic sets of reasonable quality effects for everyday use (brightness, contrast, saturation, white balance, vignettes)
- chroma key (essentially, green screen with custom adjustments)
- audio and video noise filters
- supports custom presets and provides sane default presets for effects and export
- stability and non-interrupted work; I'd prefer older and maybe less feature rich but more reliable products which won't have issues on Windows 10, 64 bit, and also won't nag me with upgrade recommendations which cannot be turned off
- does not require a beefy computer to work. I have an i3-2120 machine with 8GB RAM, and I plan to upgrade, but not higher than i5
- nice-to-have: supports GPU processing for rendering (I have nVidia GTX 960)
- nice-to-have: video stabilizing (oh, those shaky hands...)
In general, I admit, I am too lazy to download and try "them all" (and the time is short because currently many sellers offer special X-mas discounts which will not last).
I hope I'm not asking for too much - nothing highly professional; just a reliable workhorse for home video editing. If someone has had requirements close to mine and has already done the investigation, I will be really grateful if you could share your experience and the reasoning behind your choice of the software.