Good video editing software?

I’ve tried to like the Blender VSE, but I have so many problems with it. It is clunky to use, and crashes when trying to export things. Even exporting with sound is a hassle. I don’t know how the open movies manage to get it working.

In the past I’ve tried looking for free alternatives to Adobe Premier, but the pickings were slim and not very good. I’m Considering just buying Adobe Premier. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with the new Adobe Creative Cloud. Do I download the programs on my computer and use it on my computer? Or do I use the programs through the cloud, meaning, I must have an internet connection just to use the programs.

Or is the Blender VSE actually not that bad, and I’m just doing it wrong?

No experience with Adobe Cloud…

But i would like to tell you about Davinci Resolve (Lite = Free Version)

and Lightworks recently went open source.

Maybe one of which does what you need. (They are the best free Video-Editor i’ve found - looking since years for that purpose. Somewhat the open source field there is quite sparse and/or simply not usable - like Blenders VSE)

Do I download the programs on my computer and use it on my computer?
Yes

meaning, I must have an internet connection just to use the programs.
No

Or is the Blender VSE actually not that bad, and I’m just doing it wrong?
I don’t think it’s that great but you probably are.

If you were looking for free video editors I assume you don’t really need a fully featured applications such as Premiere Pro, which will be overkill for simple video editing. In that case save your money and use Premiere Elements instead

cool Thanks! I’ll try those out.

Yeah, I thought the whole premier pro would be overkill. I just remember using it in the past, and it went smoothly. I’ll look into Elements as well.

There are other free options.

Shotcut
http://www.shotcut.org/

Lightworks
http://www.lwks.com/

zs4

VideoLAN movie creator

Kdenlive
http://www.kdenlive.org/

Video Spin

Wax (this one is ancient!)
http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

Movie Plus
http://www.serif.com/free-video-editing-software/

We Video (Browser based)
https://www.wevideo.com/

Here’s even more

Cool. Em definitely bookmarking those.

For clarity, currently there is a free version but this is not yet open source. They still say there will be an open source project after the mac version is finished and released.

Current #Lightworks roadmap: finish Linux alpha tests, then public beta, then stable. Then do same for OSX. Then launch open source project.

https://twitter.com/ESLightworks/status/268166856974688256

Things have always taken considerably longer than they say they will, and the source code release is, at the moment, 3 years later than first stated.

HitFilm 2 Express.

I used Kdenlive to edit my demoreel and it’s a very good editing software to me. My favorite in free and open source world. It has everything I needed to do editing job : multi-tracks, titles, image sequence, transitions.

Blender’s VSE is not so bad after all.
Some addons seems to be very handy to make Blender behave like a classic editing software : http://blendervse.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/vse-scripts-you-cant-live-without/

Adobe makes some great … expensive(!!) … software. I’m sure that, if you really need to do what it’s designed to do, “it’s the cat’s meow.” But it can also be great overkill.

I use a Mac, and for years have used a now-ancient Final Cut Pro. I’ve also seen great work being done with … iMovie.

What really matters most, I think, is simply: “ease and familiarity of workflow.” You need to easily be able to drop strips in, pick the right in/out points, slide the audio tracks just-so, and it’s all second nature to you. VSE is very powerful, and I use it to generate some “strips” e.g. when several layers need to be combined in this way into one. But it’s “klunky,” for me, in terms of setting-up the final show (or, rather, the “final-cut edit” that will determine the final show).

And that’s a point worth noting: Most of the time, I’m editing crude strips that came from preview renders using stand-in objects, very early in the process. Looking for issues of timing, voice, pace of the show, and how the stuff will combine with other material including “The Ken Burns Effect™” still photos, and so on. So, a lot of, “well, what if we try this?” … and the rendering, such as will eventually be needed, hasn’t been done yet. “Take-offs” from the final cut will determine what actually is rendered: what frame-numbers, cameras, scenes and so forth. But also, all of the material being used is “pristine.” There’s no need to try to make-up for shortcomings in the source material. Thus, no need in my case for some of the truly-advanced capabilities of high end tools.

So, it’s really not a “technically challenging” requirement from a video point-of-view. The tool, whatever it is, ought to fit on your hand like an old, familiar, comfy leather glove that you can wear for hours.

Yeah, thats the thing. Blender’s VSE just seems too clunky to me, even when I was getting it working in the past. I tried out Lightworks, and it works pretty nicely. There are some limitations in the free version, such as you can only 1 export option for youtube at 720p, and it doesn’t support 12 FPS video. (Freestyle animations will look better with a lower framerate)

I will try out some of the others mentioned here, and see which one fits nicer. I definitely want to download the free trial of Premier elements. That might do what I need it to do, and its not too much money.

I use Kdenlive for my YouTube videos, but I’m not sure if that is available on anything besides Linux.

The Process Diary has some pretty good tutorials on using Blender for video editing, but I still find it too clumsy and frustrating. Introduction | Transitions

I think Blende VSE good in video editing.And am also prefer Avidemux,it is a small but capable open source video editor which can help you join clips, cut them (without re-encoding).And apply a lengthy list of useful filters (Add Logo, Crop, Flip, Rotate, Resize, Sharpen, Remove Noise, tweak brightness, contrast colours and more).

Someone mailed me this. I have no time now to read and it looks to be free today only so Im posting without research. http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/events/enu/2014/Q3/PDR_CNET/index.jsp

It is a limited version. It makes me so angry. It is offered as a old out dated version but why when I click on a tool it says this version “does not support this tool”? if it was a out dated version the selection would not be there. It is a cheap trick.
So all in all if you ask me it is just a lie to get you to download it. This appears to be a limited version not a older version.

It’s been mentioned earlier, and I second DaVinci Resolve Lite. It’s a professional grade editor, and you would only be missing out on multi-camera editing, 3d camera editing (available in the pro version), motion blur and de-noise.

Otherwise it’s a pretty awesome NLE, and you do get industry standard colour grading tools as well. Goes up to 4K editing. For single cam editing it’s pretty snazzy, and absolutely amazing you can download and use it for free.

Mind though, you will need a hefty rig.

I tried DaVinci Resolve and, frankly, I can’t see where the resolution can be set higher than 1920x1080, so until I do, I’m taking this whole “anything up to 4k” thing with a grain of salt. :wink:

Adobe Premiere is costly. As a student, I can’t afford it. I use its alternative - Joyoshare Media Cutter. It provides various editing tools, like lossless cut, merge, convert, crop, add logo, text, subtitles, watermark, background, rotate, flip, change aspect ratio, extract audio from video, visual effects/frames, sound effects, video controller, parameters customization, etc. It can satisfy me perfectly.

Question: do any of the programs mentioned in this thread has the ability to overlay one video file over another one? One of the things that I want to do is take some old videos of church sermons and put a video file of the PowerPoint (graciously provided by the minister of the church) in a corner of the video where the PowerPoint will line up with the point in the sermon. Anything would be helpful.

Yes. Use DaVinci Resolve if you want a fully-fledged professional software, but if you need to do something as simple as what you described, you can use Kdenlive which is more straightforward.