The Video Animal’s Cave

This week we are going to talk briefly about digital video editing software. Mainly dealing with the costs, and pro’s and con’s of a few of the systems out there.

Do I really need editing software? My computer came with something I think…

It sure did. If you own a PC, Microsoft included a thing called ‘Windows movie Maker’ with XP. If you can’t find it you can download it for free here
If you own a Macintosh computer running OSX, Apple included a program called ‘iMovie’ and ‘iDVD’ with the loaded software. If you deleted these from your applications you can restore them with the back up disk that shipped with your package.

If your needs are simple and you don’t plan on selling your masterpeice, then these programs will do what you need. However, I want to warn PC owners that ‘Windows Movie Maker’ is pretty buggy, and doesn’t really make a television quality DVD. Finally, against everything we are focused on here at the Video Animal’s Den.. it doesn’t currently support High Def. So if you own a PC (and you want High Def Video) you will need to go out and purchase another piece of software.

Mac Users are in luck. ‘iMovie’ is HD, and ‘iDVD’ will make your final DVD look nice. You will notice immediately however that there is a low ceiling on the things you can do. So this program is not recommended for professional use. If you are editing home movies, or even a low quality wedding video… this may be all you need. The best part is that iMovie is well integrated in to ‘Garage Band.’ so you even get a basic post production sound suite. All for free! Pretty sweet huh? Now you know why video people are big fans of Apple.

What editing software is best for amateur production?

Mac users may as well stick to ‘iMovie’ until they feel that they can’t do what they want and need more. PC users will have to start looking around right away for an HD editing software bundle. The best one out there for windows users is ‘Adobe Premier Elements.’ Adobe is a good company (even though they outsource their customer service to India… make you pay for shipping if you have to send it back… and take up to 30 days to get you what you ask for) They have a tendency to rush their software which leads to buggy releases, that will crash often. (So save your projects regularly) On the upside, they let everyone try out complete versions all their software for free for 30 days, and you can skip all the shipping and buy the whole kit and kaboodle on line, here. This gives you a chance to try it on your system and make sure it is the right software for you. If you only have one DVD to make for your cousins birthday party, 30 days should be enough time to make that DVD and skip buying the software all together. (Adobe will hate me for saying that, I am sure… but their customer service wasted 4 days of my life, so I consider it a fair trade) The cost of the final program is around 100 bucks. Totally reasonable for what you are getting.

Using ‘Elements’ has an added benefit. Adobe literally uses ‘elements’ of their full production suite to make these smaller cheaper versions. Using this software will get you one step ahead when or if you decide to upgrade to a full version of Adobe Premier. You will already have a basic understanding of the user interface, and how to take your final edit to DVD.

For the Mac user that wants to take a step up from iMovie, and make a more polished film; You can try a free trial of ‘Adobe Premeir Elements’ and see if that works for you, or Apple offers a basic version of ‘Final Cut’, called ‘Final Cut Express 4′. Unfortunatly, you can’t do a free trial… They consider iMovie the ‘free trial’ and FCE4 is very much an improved version of iMovie.

This masterpiece needs a professional touch. What post-production software should I buy?

Great! Now we get to look at the fun stuff. There are a ton of options for the prosumer market. But I am going to look at two, Adobe Production Suite for PC users and a “Final Cut Studio 2′ for Mac users.

There are other production suites out there, and I beg you to do your research. You might find that one of the other suites out there works better for you. My father uses in ‘Vegas’ as his front line editing system, and there are a few ‘homebrewed’ ones as well. I have taken the time and boiled this list down to the two I consider the best, but there are a few others out there worth looking at.

Final Cut Studio 2

Apple did a really good job about 5 years ago. They bought out a really good software developer and made their software work great on their platform. This in turn meant that you had to buy a Mac to use this hefty chunk of software, and now Macs dominate editing suites everywhere. It is pretty rare that you see something other than a mac in a film or telivision studio now a days, and Final Cut is the reason why.

Final Cut is a great honking peice of software. it will run you about $1300, and with that you will get absolutely everything you need. At first this seems like a huge investment, but it is offset by the fact that shelling out big bucks now will let you upgrade for much cheaper as new versions come out. This is basically a one time investment, with minor chunks of cash every couple of years to upgrade to a better version of the software. Apple also does a great job of upgrading and fixing their software for free, and their customer support is absolutely the finest out there. For that reason alone I would chuck out your PC and get Final Cut.

Adobe Production Suite CS3

Adobe Production Suite is a comparable bundle of software for the PC user. (They make a Mac version too, but Final Cut is better for the same price, so get Final Cut) If you don’t want to spend that much cash all at once, you can buy just ‘Adobe Premier’ ; which will let you edit and produce a full DVD or HD DVD. However, you won’t have all the sound or video effect software that Adobe is famous for (After Effects and Soundbooth). The full production bundle comes with a full version of ‘Flash’, ‘Illustrator’ and best of all ‘Photoshop’. This makes buying the full package a HUGE value. I ended up buying the production suite because I like to use ‘After Effects’ for titling and keying, and I need a copy of ‘Photoshop’ around for many other reasons. It was actually about the same price to get the whole package instead of buying these two programs by themselves.

Adobe’s customer service stinks. But they are trying to change that. Adobe also lets you try their complete software for free and see if you like it.. no one else is nice enough to do that. You can try out Adobe Premier here.

Pros and Cons

Final Cut has one major flaw. ‘Motion’. ‘Motion’ is the titling and effects software bundled with the package, and it does a decent job for basic titles. The big benefit is that if you are using ‘Motion’ to do titling and effects, you can make changes to the titles without having to output (this is a HUGE thing, we will talk about it more later). However, it is very limited and the quality is not always there. This is where adobe has the upper hand ‘After Effects7′ is the titling/effects software bundled with the production suite. It is an amazing chunk of software, does crystal clear effects, the best chromakey, and has a lot more titling and motion effects. The downside is that every time you want to make a minor change in your title, you will need to output, import and reintegrate the footage in to your time line, which can be costly if you are on a tight schedule.

The solution is expensive, and not really the thrust of this article. You fork out the bucks for both Final Cut and Adobe Production CS3. Between the two packages you will have every single damn thing a video editing junkie can think of, except for 3d letters… which you will have to fork out even more money for. All we can do at this point is hope that with each release, ‘Motion’ keeps improving and that one day it will catch up with Adobe. (Yes… You can try After Effects out for free and compare… here)

Final Cut is also missing ‘Flash’ which comes in really handy for any web work you do. The reality is that the age of hard copy video is dying. Web broadcast and distribution is not just the future, it is now. Web is the only way to get true HD content out there without compatibilty issues or entering the HD DVD vs Blu-Ray debate. So having ‘Flash’ and other high end web compression apps is a huge bonus.

Final Cut wins on another side of the spectrum. The editing side. Final Cut is easy to use, doesn’t crash very often and works really fast. Premier is clunky, ugly, slow and crashes all the time. I like to think of Final Cut as a slick looking, well maintained luxury liner; fast, sleek lines, looks good, works well… Premier on the other hand is like an old tug boat; ugly as sin, slow, but gets the job done, and even if it sometimes stalls… it doesn’t sink. Since performance and ease of editing are really the most important parts of this debate, Final Cut really crushes Premier… so if you have a Mac… buy Final Cut.

In Future articles we will take a long look at the basics of video editing, and all the headaches that come with doing post production. For now i hope this helps you with the last big purchase before you can begin making a movie. Next week we will take a look at the accessories you will need to get your outdoor production started.

Stay Tuned

The Animal