Good Freeware Video Editor?

[siouxdax]

Anyone know of a good freeware video editor. I have ArcSoft Showbiz pre-installed on my PC, but I don't like it very much. I'd rather support open source. All I really want is to be able to do some basic editing, fades, add sound/music, titles, etc. Also want it to support a variety of formats. I've looked all over the internet, then realized I should ask here. You guys rock.

[nudone]

i've not tried it but it's open source http://www.jahshaka.org/

[tinjaw]

I haven't tried it myself, but I am aware of ZS4.

[tinyvillager]

It's hard to find free video editors.

Try to get to know VirtualDub

http://www.virtualdub.org/

There are several builds this one handles direct dvd (mpeg 2) files

http://fcchandler.ho...et/stable/index.html

http://forums.virtualdub.org/

Filters-
http://lags.leetcode.net/filters.html
http://compression.r...onizer/index_en.html
http://home.earthlin.../download/index.html
http://www.neuron2.net/
http://www.thedeemon...m/VirtualDubFilters/

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Some of my video editing resources...

*Favorite Forums*
http://www.videohelp.com/
http://forum.doom9.org/


Don't forget windows built in Movie Maker isnt' that bad,here are things that make it better... 
http://www.papajohn.org/
http://www.rehanfx.org/
http://hitthebongo.co.uk/videofx/
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/
http://users.ca.astound.net/movieblog/

[nudone]

i love virtualdub but it's not really something you'd use for serious editing - you know, moving video clips and audio around on a time line (i.e. NLE).

but now i've reread the original post i see that isn't what was asked for anyway.

[dhuser]

I tried DebugMode Wax before:
http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

Very nice effects and presets.

dhuser

[siouxdax]

Wow. Thanks so much for the input! I have a lot of software to check out. You guys rock!

[Carol Haynes]

My 2p is that in the world of video editing you get what you pay for (if ease of use and quality of output is important).

If you just want something to edit out ads in recorded programs TMPGEnc is useful - but there aren't any obvious candidates for full blown video editing for free. ULEAD and Pinnacle so some reasonably cheap consumer level packages that are reasonable.

If you can splash out a little cash you may want to consider Adobe Premier Elements and Sony Vegas MovieStudio. Both are around the $100 mark but would make life much simpler and efficient.

I haven't used Premier since the Pro version 6 of the full package (I got a copy for free with some hardware but never really got on with it even though I have a number of Adobe related packages) and I much prefer Sony's Vegas software but I would guess that is a personal preference. Both also include DVD authoring software.

For Vegas see http://www.sonymedia...ucts/vegasfamily.asp

For Premier Elements see http://www.adobe.com...remiereel/index.html

[dpierron]

On the Mac I use a free program called MPEG StreamClip ; I know that a Windows version exists, but I never tried it.
Anyway, I love this program !

[Renegade]

I'm with Carol on this. You get what you pay for in this area.

You still need to be choosy though as there are some more expensive solutions out there that don't deliver. e.g. While Sonic basically defines the DVD authoring standard (solutions start at $25,000 and go up to around $100,000 - or used to anyways), their consumer level DVD authoring tools don't quite measure up (or at least they didn't last I checked) and you're better off getting the DVD authoring software from MediaChance, which is cheaper and better.

But if you're just doing stuff for home, it doesn't matter all that much.

Vegas and Premiere are very good and still affordable, all things considered. Many NLE packages can run you into the 10's of thousands of dollars.

Consider that if you're doing stuff for DVD, a Dolby Digital encoder will cost you $1,000, a DTS can be had for about the same, and an MLP costs $2,500. And that's just for the audio encoder. $100 for a video editor is pretty darn cheap all of a sudden.

[Carol Haynes]

I'm with Carol on this. You get what you pay for in this area.

While Sonic basically defines the DVD authoring standard  their consumer level DVD authoring tools don't quite measure up (or at least they didn't last I checked) and you're better off getting the DVD authoring software from MediaChance, which is cheaper and better.

But if you're just doing stuff for home, it doesn't matter all that much.

Vegas and Premiere are very good and still affordable, all things considered. Many NLE packages can run you into the 10's of thousands of dollars.

-Renegade (January 18, 2007, 04:00 PM)

Actually I disagree - I think Sony's DVD Architect v. 2 is pretty good and the bundle with Vegas is expensive (for a home user) but nevertheless good quality.

Having said that I mostly author DVDs using TMPGEnc DVD Author. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but you can do loads of stuff in a very quick and simple way. I only resort to DVD Architect if I want more control over what I am doing.

I tried MediaChance but object to the need to splash out more money to be able to use Dolby sound and I found their user interface not very intuitive and the documentation not as good as Sony's.

The only thing I would say is that for any of these applications try to avoid producing Video or Audio that needs recoding in the application. I have had strange glitches with poor sound sync with all of them but only when things need to be recoded on the fly.

[Jimdoria]

Just a side note - ZS4 (ZweiStein 4) and Wax are both video compositors, rather than straight-on video editing programs, so the learning curve might be a bit steeper.

ZweiStein in particular shows some real promise - if you check out the videos on their website of what it can do, it's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, my main PC is too underpowered to run it, so I haven't really been able to play with it as much as I'd like.

I use Sony Movie Studio (Vegas Lite, really) and have been very happy with its capabilities.

[Renegade]

Actually I disagree - I think Sony's DVD Architect v. 2 is pretty good and the bundle with Vegas is expensive (for a home user) but nevertheless good quality.

Having said that I mostly author DVDs using TMPGEnc DVD Author. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but you can do loads of stuff in a very quick and simple way. I only resort to DVD Architect if I want more control over what I am doing.

I tried MediaChance but object to the need to splash out more money to be able to use Dolby sound and I found their user interface not very intuitive and the documentation not as good as Sony's.

The only thing I would say is that for any of these applications try to avoid producing Video or Audio that needs recoding in the application. I have had strange glitches with poor sound sync with all of them but only when things need to be recoded on the fly.

-Carol Haynes (January 18, 2007, 06:00 PM)

The Vegas bundle is $525, which isn't cheap, but is still very affordable considering what this kind of software generally costs.

The thing I like about the MediaChance software is that it's easy to use and it doesn't do any re-encoding. A professional Dolby encoder costs a pretty penny, and you just cannot buy one at general consumer prices (I know Dolby's licensing and it's not cheap).

The MediaChance DVD authoring tool isn't really geared towards home use though. You need to be comfortable with authoring tools to use it easily, so I can see why some people wouldn't find it the best for usability.

The key problem with many tools is that they do re-encode, which will downgrade the quality. If you've got the encoded material, then something like the MC tool works well.

[Carol Haynes]

TMPGEnc DVD Author 2 does not recode and only accepts DVD conformant files. If you need to recode than TMPGEnc XPress does a good job and TMPGEnc MPEG Editor does a good job at editing video files without forcing recoding (so you can delete ads etc easily without degrading the video).

Sony's DVD Architect 2 only recodes your video when it absolutely has to (it doesn't if videos are already DVD compatible formats).

[Renegade]

Here's one - haven't tried it though:

http://www.jahshaka.org/

[Jammo the OrganizedFellow]

http://www.jahshaka.org/
great thread, looking over the site now.