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Comparisons of Non-Linear Video Editing Packages? 53

Posted by Cliff from the how-well-do-they-rate dept.
kickabear asks: "I'm working on an independent (that means I'm poor) film. I'm looking for a site (or a book, I'm not picky) which reviews various non-linear video editing packages. I've found a few sites but I can't really find anything that does a side-by-side comparison of the features and capabilities of products such as Premiere Pro or Avid Xpress Pro or the 20 projects listed on Sourceforge. The project will be filmed using a brand new Sony HVRZ1U HDV camera, so if any comparison sites lean toward HDV/HDTV, that would be favorable. Any information, war stories, or advice would be appreciated."
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Comparisons of Non-Linear Video Editing Packages? More

Comparisons of Non-Linear Video Editing Packages?

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  • Final Cut Express was just updated for HDV (Score:5, Informative)

    by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:00PM (#11817006) Homepage
    If you haven't used Avid before, avoid it since it has a vertical cliff face learning curve. I tried playing with it at a tradeshow and it was nothing like any other editing program I'd seen before. It felt very modal and inflexible, which made it very difficult to get comfortable with. Of course if you want to eventually make a living editing mainstream motion pictures this might not be the best advice, but if you're rolling your own independent film it's not going to be the best choice.

    The most featureful and best supported editing package is Apple's Final Cut Pro and its little brother Final Cut Express. You'd have to buy an Apple Macintosh computer to use them, but in my experience it's well worth it. Final Cut Express probably has all you need and at $299 or $99 when purchased with a Mac it's the deal of the century. If you need the featurees

    When video editing was last discussed, most people who used Linux-based systems were still putting them together from CVS and fighting bugs, so I doubt that these products have the maturity you need to edit a film.

    i don't know much about Adobe's Premiere Pro, but it's probably your best choice if you want to use Windows. Premiere used to be an absolutely ghastly program, with the result that Final Cut Pro slaughtered it in the marketplace despite being $400 more expensive. I understand that Premiere Pro copied a lot of features from Final Cut and so it might be fine. I don't have personal experience with it, though.

    You might also want to check out Vegas Video, which has its set of adherents.

    If you presently have a Windows computer, bear in mind that you'll probably need to upgrade it with FireWire ports and tons of disk space before it can become a video editing workstation. It will still most likely not run as smoothly as a Mac-based system where FireWire is built in and everything's designed and built by the same company.

    Two good forums for this are http://www.creativecow.net and http://www.2-pop.com/ . I have to run, good luck with your project!

    D
    • I've used premiere to edit together individual segments rendered for a student 3d animation. Id never really used a video editing program before then, and i didnt find it to be too rough. I probably less than scratched the surface, but i found it to be really user friendly as well as producing a nice quality final render of our animation (which wasnt accepted to siggraph's space competition)
    • Get Final Cut Pro for your Mac. Even consider enrolling in one class at your local community college ($10-100) to qualify for student discounts, because for Final Cut, it's worth it ($299 from $1299, I believe). While you're into spending money, consider the Production Suite [apple.com], especially if you need cool titling effects. You may not, in which case Motion might be a bust.

      Finally, try and find a local university [New] Media Center. If it's open to the public, you can most likely find a lab with the aforementi
      • Motion's great but you only need it if you require fairly sophisticated effects. More importantly, it only works on fairly high-end hardware, with the graphics card being as important as the CPU.

        If you just want to make the letters dance for title sequences, the Livetype program included with Final Cut Express and Pro is fine.

        However, if you want to do professional DVD production, you want DVD Studio Pro, and the Production Suite bundle is a substantial discount.

        In theory, I believe educational versions
    • I used Rremiere RT a few years ago for a couple of projects, and I really liked it at the time. A few months ago, I was asked to do a video project, and I ended up going with Vegas 4 (Sony has bought Sonic Foundry, and Vegas 5 is branded as Sony).

      I tried Premiere Pro at a friend's place, and I was really not impressed with it after trying Vegas (keep in mind it had been a few years since I used any NLE softwarae). It was basically the same as I remember it from 5 years ago (maybe that was the problem) but
    • I had to leave abruptly, which is why I didn't finish my comment.

      If you need the features of Final Cut Pro, by all means buy it, but you might be able to get away with using the Final Cut Express feature set if you're not doing sophisticated color correction or compositing.

      I own FInal Cut Pro, but I would be hard-pressed to find a reason to buy Final Cut Pro instead of Express today. And note that FCP does not have HDV support and will not until Final Cut Pro 5.0 is introduced at NAB a bit over a month f
      • There are a couple of third parties that offer HDV support for FCP. There are links right from Apple's FCP page [apple.com].

        Otherwise you're right on. I've been doing high-end amateur film editing for a while now and I'm just starting to run into things I can't do in Final Cut Express (FCE).

        to teh submitter. If you're open to Apple SW FCE for $300 ($99 with a new machine or $149 student) is a damn good choice. Check out their comparison page [apple.com] and decide if you need the Pro feature set. My guess is that since
        • I think that if I'm paying the (sort of) big bucks for FCP, HDV should not cost me extra money, thus the annoyance.

          What kind of limitations are you running into in FCE? I'm curious because even now I'm not sure how significant the differences are, except for the inability to edit media other than DV/HDV.

          D
  • Mac's come standard with easy to use HD movie editing. While not a complete whizbang big budget movie editor, they certainly get the job done in a profressional looking manor. And with Mac's starting at $499 now, it will probably be cheaper than purchasing editing software.

  • iMovie HD, Final Cut Express (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@p[ ]ell.net ['acb' in gap]> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:01PM (#11817029) Homepage
    If you're on a budget, I would think a $499 package would be better than Premiere's $699 package, right?

    iMovie [apple.com] is only $499 bundled with a Mac mini. There's a lot of reviews for iMovie sans HD, and I'm sure a few with; iMovie is pretty solid for basic NLE (I've used it for weddings, presentations, and DVD quality releases), but most of the 'magic' comes from the camera, cameraman, director, and source material. The NLE can't do anything with crap.
  • FWIW, Macs now come with iMovie HD which has HD capabilities. You could also get Final Cut Pro or SE version too.

    http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/

  • all the same (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cambipular ( 787309 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:04PM (#11817068)
    I've also found that it's hard to find side by side comparisons. I've used just about every major NLE out there, and I've come to the conclusion that the reason behind you not being able to find comparisons is that they're all pretty much the same. Aside from a few UI nuances, they all work the same and do the same thing and have the same types of bugs and problems with hardware (as in capture devices). One of the easiest to work with (once you get used to it) is cinelerra. [http] Don't count it out until you've tried it. I've never used it with HD, but it's supposed play nice.
    • I'll second the recommendation for cinelerra, which I use for wedding videos I do on the side, and for some reason didn't show up on the linked sourceforge search. I have even used my laptop to make my own little 2-node renderfarm.

      Still, the topic of NLEs on videographer forums is almost as virulent as vi vs. emacs arguments in tech circles. They all do pretty much the same thing, but there is usually one that fits best with any given person's style. Without knowing your style, it is difficult to make

    • From their site, it doesn't look like Cinelerra is intended as an NLE for movie editing like Final Cut or Avid.

      Reading their page, I notice a strong emphasis on effects and rendering, including the use of render farms, which seems completely unrelated to actual film editing.

      At the same time, the essential basics of editing like import and export of EDLs, aren't mentioned anywhere. The words "time code" never appear, nor do key terms like DV, HD, SDI, 24p, 25p, 50 60 or other ingredients of the traditiona
      • I have only limited experience with FCP & less with Avid, but Cinelerra DOES do all the basic editing tasks which I learned. Wikipedians [wikipedia.org] also consider it to be NLE & a few of the acronym keywords you listed are in the docs [heroinewarrior.com]. It is, at least, worth a shot.
        • Thanks for the link.

          Just to prove my point in a silly but slashdotty way, I couldn't resist counting word occurances (you didn't expect someone on /. to actually read the stuff, did you?):

          $lynx -dump http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra/cinelerra.html >cinelerra
          $ perl -0 -ne 'while (/\b(BWF|flex|ALE|EDL)\b/g){$c++}; print "$c\n"' cinelerra
          14
          $ perl -0 -ne 'while (/\b(60i|50i|25p|24p|2[45] ?fps)\b/g){$c++}; print "$c\n"' cinelerra
          4
          $ perl -0 -ne 'while (/\btime[- ]?code/gi){$c++}; print "$c\n"' cinelerr

  • The Matrox RT.X10 Suite [matrox.com] bundles the Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, and a few other handy bits of kit with their capture card. Goes for about $1100 for the full Monty, $700 for a more limited set. Worth taking a look at... We use it for cutting and splicing training sessions these days, but if you know the tool it cranks out nice stuff.

  • Not much choice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rduke15 ( 721841 ) <(rduke15) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:37PM (#11817467)
    If you are talking about a professional project (even on a low budget), there is not so much choice: it's either Avid or Final Cut Pro. I never heard of a film longer than a few minutes cut on anything else (not counting products which died long ago like Lightworks).

    Avid has the advantage of better/easier integration with the other parts of post production like sound editing on Pro Tools, color correction on Symphony, etc. if you need these.

    It's probabably your better bet for more demanding projects, and probably worth learning since it's the industry "standard". Another possible advantage is that it runs on both Mac and Windows.

    Final Cut Pro tends to be easier to learn, and the editors I know tend to prefer it for small projects which don't need to be moved around to higher-end Avids for finishng, to Pro Tools, etc.

    It only runs on Macs, but that also makes it potentially a lot cheaper, at least to start with: there is no dongle, and you can borrow a copy from someone else. Apple doesn't care so much: they have sold you a Mac anyway, and eventually you will pay for FCP too. Avid on the other hand relies on the software for it's revenue, so it is dongle-protected.

    Whatever you get, if you buy rather than renting, you should realize that after a year you will probably have spent at least twice than what you planned, that there will always be stuff that you would need but cannot afford, and it has to pay for itself within 2 years, after which it's obsolete, you cannot rent it at any decent price, and you don't want to use it for yourself.

    I don't mean it never makes sense buying. Sometimes it does. But I've also seen many cases where it didn't.

  • as an old editor... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaveJay ( 133437 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:42PM (#11817516)
    Here's what I can tell you.

    ---

    1. Your skillset is the single most important thing for your edit.

    If you don't know how to use a piece of software, you won't use the full capabilities of it, and if you're taking the time to learn how to use it, that's time and attention away from the editing choices you're making. If you already know how to use a certain piece of software, use THAT. If you're using it and run into something you need to do that can't be done using the software you know, THEN go out and find software that can do that ONE THING, do that one thing in that software, and bring the composited piece back into your main edit on the software you know.

    The hardest thing to do when editing with all these tools is remember that the best pieces can be (and usually are) done without the fancy tools at all. If your piece is only good because it contains a certain special effect, then it isn't any good, and if your piece is good, you can edit it on 16mm and still entertain/win awards.

    2. Your footage is the second most important thing for your edit.

    If your footage is sub-par, your edit will be sub-par, to a degree significantly larger than any improvement you might gain by the incrementally better output that one package might provide over another. Obviously you don't want a crappy consumer package that restricts your ability to import/export or only works at a low resolution, but most packages don't do any such thing. Pay attention to your lighting, your sound guy, your shot composition, and your actors.

    3. Your time is the third most important thing for your edit.

    If you're learning, you're not editing. If you're rendering, you're not editing. If you're rebooting, you're not editing. Make sure you have a stable computer that you know how to use, plenty of storage space and memory, and for goodness sake make an offline edit -- and a few re-edits, probably -- of the whole piece BEFORE you start compositing the special effects in. If at the end of the day you need to switch software packages or take your piece somewhere else for the online edit, you'll be much better off with a solid offline edit and no special effects than with a mediocre offline edit with tons of special effects that need to be redone because they're (surprise) only offline quality.

    4. Your money is the fourth most important thing for your edit.

    You don't have unlimited funds; would you rather spend it on a software package with extra features you'll never use, or on better makeup and that extra grip on the day you shoot?

    ---

    Okay, I'm done ranting now. Seriously: good luck.
    • emedia magazine regularly reviews video equipment and software. I have a professional courtesy (free) subscription. Their web site is emedialive.com.
  • You can always do your own.
  • http://www.digitalfilmtree.com/

    The guy that runs this is a friend of mine. They've done work on a number of moview and television shows. Their main claim to fame is around making the mac do things that would normally require an avid machine. If nothing else, then can offer you some advice and suggestions about how to get a lot of work done professionally but inexpensively.

  • Avid has a free version (Score:3, Informative)

    by michaelbuddy ( 751237 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @08:39PM (#11819327)
    A lot of people are touting mac, true final cut pro and imovie are good, downright excellent. At the same time though if you're not used to Mac, I wouldn't just jump and get one and then find out you might not like the feel of Mac. (shocking but sometimes true) Mac people would never believe it.

    If you are already running windows, which I assume you are since premiere pro only works on windows. You might consider using the free Avid software at first.

    http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2003/030107 _A vidFreeDV_prod.html

    If you dont' have editing experience it's a good way to go. You can import using a lot of free software. Including virtualdub.

    At least look into the free version. I made a first movie with the most junky linear decks back in the day. I would have killed for free avid back then.

    what are your film specs? how long? any effects? any 3D. any other special camera or fx work? You may be just fine cutting together your movie with Adobe Premiere Elements. It's been rated very highly.

    Look into DVD Lab too if you need to make DVD's with sophisticated menus. You can also make a DVD with TMPGenc. Google will help you find it my son.
  • now known as Sony video, I think. Easiest to learn and very powerful.

  • Ignore SourceForge (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dghcasp ( 459766 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @12:05AM (#11820757)
    The project will be filmed using a brand new Sony HVRZ1U HDV camera...

    If you can afford a camera like that, you can afford to spend some money for an editing package that works right out of the box, rather then spending a week downloading, patching, getting dependencies, then trying to figure out if you want to render with --rftopts=3,4,0x4628,93 or --rftopts=3,2,0x3528,92 with some sourceforge package.

    I've used Premiere and Vegas. If you haven't done NLE before, Vegas is a great place to start - It's intuitive and works quite well, plus if you buy the Vegas+DVD package, you get a free AC-3 encoder for Dolby Surround.

    Premiere has a few more features, but it's much less intuitive to learn and use. Where Premiere really comes into its own is when you're doing part of your work in another Adobe application (e.g. After effects, photoshop, whatever) - Moving stuff between Adobe apps is soooooo smooth, and doesn't need a render-load-edit-render-save-reload pass like when trying to use After Effects with vegas.

  • Vegas all the way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @02:04AM (#11821238)
    I've used Primere Pro and a variety of "prosumer" editing packages, but I keep coming back to Vegas.

    It's significantly faster than most NLE packages, offers a number of preview modes including a decent real-time preview, renders quickly, and doesn't burn a hole in your pocket.

    It comes with a basic (but decent) titler, and it allows you to layer clips easily to do things like video inlays (layer clip + frame filter to resize video) or graphic overlays (PNG image with alpha). You can use envelopes to modify the alpha of a layer, which is really nice for custom fade effects.

    All in all, it's a very powerful package that's not too hard to use. They have a free trial so you can see if you like it.
  • I am by no means an expert in non-linear editing; I have however worked in two major Australia television networks (not in editing) and done work experience in the other major network, Channel Seven. My bulk of my T.V. work life was spend at a local Television station with a broadcast to 6 million people (Largest Network in Australia, but not exactly the most advanced by any means) and I have done work experience with both TARBS and Fox Sports Australia, the later two use Quantel equipment (http://www.quan
    • LE is a good editing tool, but it's totally driven by how fast a computer you have. If you don't have the biggest baddest of everything, it'll take just as long as an unassisted (ie. a dedicated PCI board) NLE. LE on anything less than a 2.8 with less than a GB of ram and a standard Geforce card is not all that good of an editing experience.

      It can also be very awkward for a casual editor to get deep enough into it. It's good on the surface for editing, but for file management, DVD's, and some of the mor
    • After wasting years learning and using Premiere I went to a Pinnacle Seminar and fell in love with Edition.

      Nothing compares.

  • Wrong Camera (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kentborg ( 12732 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @10:14AM (#11823286)
    You say you want to use the Sony HVRZ1U. Looking at the specs, I
    suggest it is a bad idea, particularly when you are considering post
    production issues.

    The HVRZ1U is 1080i only. Interlace scanning was a really cool hack
    from the analogue age, but in the digital age it is a terrible hack.
    You want progressive scanning. Particularly if you hope to release on
    film, you want progressive scanning.

    If you acquire your footage progressive you can later interlace it if
    you have to, but if you acquire interlaced you can never get good
    progressive footage out of it.

    The big "1080" number might be attractive, but being interlaced it is
    really more like 540. Look for a progressive scanned camera if you
    possibly can. I think some progressive cameras run at slower frame
    rates, but 25 frame per second camera works really well if you want to
    go to 24fps film. Even if you go to video, you will get more of a
    film look.

    That is just for conventional editing that only consists of cuts. Do
    anything slightly interesting (all that stuff that digital editing
    makes so easy) and your post production software is going to go to
    considerable effort to try to deinterlace. Make it easier, get better
    results, don't use interlace in the first place.

    Interlace: A once clever hack that should not be perpetuated!

    -kb

    • Re:Wrong Camera (Score:2, Informative)

      by ajservo ( 708572 )
      Well, there's a problem with all of that.

      There's no 1080p. 1080i's the limit.

      The HDV spec is written out already. This is part of the spec. If we took the limitations of a format and didn't work with them because of it, we'd all still be snubbing video in the first place over film. The 1080 output of this camera looks good on a TV. Certainly far better than 720X480 offered by DV resolution. Although HDV isn't as wonderful looking as full on HD, it's still good enough that if you just up the color sat
  • I used the Video Toaster back in the day (when it was still on Amiga), and I know they went non-linear with the Flyer some time ago. No one here has mentioned them; do they suck now, or is their product overkill for the user's needs?
    • NewTek is still in the game. VideoToaster 4 was recently released, and in my opinion has the biggest bang for the buck. I have used everything from FreeDV's to Avids to standalone appliances. For SD video editing, the VT4 is extremely impressive.
  • If you already have windows, and are familiar with Adobe products, Premiere is the way to go. If you know Photoshop, you'll have little trouble figuring out Premiere. Having used both Final Cut and Premiere, I prefer Premiere, Apple is just trying too hard to make their computers 'friendly', and it gets on my nerves, because while Final Cut, in their minds, may be laid out well enough for a 4 year old to use, nothing is where I've come to expect things to be.
    • Many of the responses have not considered that this is a very new camera that is not fully supported by today's NLEs. Certainly is the best thing to shot an independent film with (for under $5000) even through it is interlaced (shoot 50i, then de-interlace with results still higher resolution than a DVX100 -- the other popular indie video camera.) It terms of NLE that support it, Avid has only made promises, and Apple has only limited support Final Cut Express not in the Final Cut Pro HD. The best functi
  • QTTimeCode

    "QTTimeCode is a sample application that illustrates how to use the timecode media handler.
    You can use QTTimeCode to add a timecode track to a movie, to extract the current timecode value from a movie, to extract the source information about a timecode track, and to toggle the display of a movie's timecode track.
    68k or PowerPC (or newer) machines running System 8.5 or later.
    PC with Intel Pentium or compatible processor."

    It works.

    Mac
    (runs in OS 9 - 10.2.x, maybe? 10.3.x - native)

    http://develope

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