Video editing software

[NutmegCT]

Gentlemen -

What Windows app do you use for simple video editing?

Here's what I want to do:

- Adding captions, subtitles, and/or text overlays to the final product.

- Making several individual avi files (about 100MB each) into a single avi file.

- Adding "two second black" between each scene.

No fancy fades, picture in picture, dissolves, or special effects. Basically just adding text overlay to avi files.

Thanks.
Tom

 

[coldplugs]

Have you tried Windows Movie Maker? It's free and may do all you need. I use a few different editing packages but I think Movie Maker does all you want. Easy enough to try it, I think.

 

[aerog]

What John said... for free Windows "Live Movie Maker" (the current name of the product) is pretty good.

For $75 Adobe Premier Elements 10 does a ton. I had some experience with an older version of Premier Pro, the latest of the "elements" version seemed to be a little easier to use. Both have those fancy transitions you don't need, but once you see how easy they are you might add them anyway

 

[Basil]

I've used Windows Movie Maker and found it fairly simply and it should do most of what you need. Free is worth a try. Now that I have an iMac I use iMovie and ScreenFlow.

 

[NutmegCT]

Thanks gents.

Cranked up Windows Movie Maker and it did everything I needed. Great suggestion. Played the final product through Movie Maker Preview, and it looked great. Added titles, fades, and made re-ordering and splicing the clips easy.

Strange result: even saving in the highest quality possible, the final result was washed out colors and slightly grainy picture throughout. Viewed in Movie Maker preview, it was perfect. But in Windows Media Player, and in Windows Real Player, the quality was much lower.

Yet (Doc will love this ...), I opened the final file in Totem Movie Player (Linux) and the quality was excellent.

Weird-a-mundo.

Tom