Advice on Editing Software Please.

[Churk]

Newbie here. I am looking for recommendations on video editing software to produce an HD documentary piece. I have shot most of my footage already on a Canon Vixia HFS20, and now need a good video editing software application to tie everything together. A friend of mine who works within the film industry recommended Final Cut Pro, however, that's for a Mac, so either I buy a Mac and then buy Final Cut Pro, or I suppose I could install a Mac OS on another partition of my PC's drive, run the hardware emulator for it, and then buy Final Cut Pro on top of all that. But my friend also suggested Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas. So what do I need to be able to do? Well, scene transitions, beginning and end titles/credits, ability to tie separate video, still image, and audio tracks together, as well as my narration of the project. This will not be a big screen production and I am in no way associated with the film industry. I run a nostalgic web site and decided to do this documentary as a tribute to a group of kids from my former junior high school, who recently held a 42-year reunion concert. The end result of my efforts may be nothing more than a DVD we produce and sell to my web site visitors and other interested parties. If good enough, the documentary may get a screening somewhere, but I'm not putting the cart before the horse.

So, having said all that, any suggestions?

Thanks!

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Hi Churk and welcome to Muvipix.

I split your question off the original topic to a new thread as you'll likely get more responses that way.

If you are a PC user the likely candidates are what most folk here use - Premiere Elements, Premiere Pro, Magix, Vegas etc. Some folk have Macs so will use Final Cut. (I won't get into the PC versus Mac arguments )

For what you wish to acheive you can easily manage with Elements but beware that, if Adobe follow past practice, there will be a new version out in a few weeks.

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Churk, Welcome

There are many people here that use Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro with great success.
We also have Vegas / Vegas Movie Studio users, Magix users and even Final Cut / Final Cut Express users.
Whatever you choose this is a great place for help.

As John mentioned, Adobe will most likely come out with a new version of Premiere Elements in 4 - 6 weeks.
That being the case you might want to download the Vegas Movie Studio trail, see how you like that and then do the same with Premiere Elements when version 9 is released.

Overall you will need a fairly powerful PC to run editing software to edit High Definition video.
Don't know what your computer specs are but you might want to discuss the real life requirements for that as well.

[Steve Grisetti]

Hi, Churk! Welcome to Muvipix!

Just to add to the others' suggestions, much depends on how much you'd like to pay for the software too.

Your needs seem to be pretty basic. You can probably get by with an under-$100 program like Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas MovieStudio.

As Chuck says, your biggest challenge will be powering an AVCHD edit, which can take a pretty powerful computer. (Ideally a quad core processor with 4 gigs of RAM minimum.)

If you don't have a machine that powerful. there is software for converting the video to a simpler to edit format, and we'll be glad to recommend that to you also.

Meantime, be sure to check out our free tutorials for Premiere Elements to get a feel for how the program works.

To find them, just go to our products page and type "Basic Training" in the search box.

[Churk]

I have read the replies and I really appreciate the comments. I want to stress that even though I'm not out to make a, "real Hollywood movie", the intention is to produce a documentary to be initially shown at an actual theater, and after that I will look at distribution on DVD. Given that, I don't want my production to look like so many other clips seen on YouTube. I have had a co-worker suggest Premiere Pro, so that goes along with one of your recommendations. However, I don't understand the comments about a new release, when the current version was supposedly released just a few months ago?

[Paul LS]

The new release referred to is for Premiere "Elements" not Premiere "Pro". The release cycles are different and a new version of Premiere Elements will probably be released in September/October.

[Chuck Engels]

The move from Premiere Elements to Premiere Pro is a fairly easy one. The cost of Premiere Elements is under $100 and you can do just about anything with it. Many of the differences are in tools and workflow, but 90% of what you can do in Pro can be done in Elements just in a different way.

I could do documentary film editing with Premiere Elements or Premiere Pro. I use both and up until a few months ago used Elements about 80% of the time. I have forced myself to use Pro now, just because I want to do that and because I own it. If I was starting out again I would use Premiere Elements to learn and then switch to Pro when there was a need, which you may never find.

What might be more necessary or desired is a program like After Effects. Something that can add effects and motion backgrounds to your films among other things. A bit more expensive however but well worth the $$. Cheryl has become very good at After Effects animation and creates some great effects, she has posted a few of them.

What type of documentary are you talking about?
Here is a link to a documentary film called 'Troublemaker' about World War 2.
It is very well done and completely edited with Premiere Elements (I think it was version 3).
It is in 3 parts, take a look and see if that is similar
http://www.chuckengels.com/PremierVideo/Clark/video/

I've done a lot with this $80 piece of software, so have many others. You can still find version 7 around, that would be worth buying for starters. You can also download the trial for version 8 and give it a shot. Anything you learn will translate to Premiere Pro anyway, just be sure to stick to Timeline editing and not Sceneline.

Still don't know anything about your equipment either, that is more important than the software. You don't want to spend 100's of hours just rendering footage, and a slow machine will waste a lot of your time that way.

[Churk]

Wow, what a wealth of knowledge! Thank you to all who have posted. I guess my final decision is based upon my desire to find one good product to use and go with that. I want to avoid going through the time and trouble of, "trying out", apps, only to find out that there are limitations and having to go with another. I think I'm considering on the one hand to go the complete Mac route, to include MacBook Pro, to include Final Cut Express, or utilize a dedicated PC and use either Premiere Elements or Vegas.

[Steve Grisetti]

Whatever way you choose to go, Churk, there's a good chance someone on this forum will be able to answer any questions you may have or support you if you get stuck.

I run both a PC and a Mac and use a variety of software, so I can likely help you out on either platform.