Video editing programs....whats good?

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Video editing programs....whats good?
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flag StuHaight
Posted: Jan 17, 2010 at 9:15 Quote
ianfleming wrote:
Vegas really is the simplest when it comes to audio mixing and working music into your footage, and a very good way to develop your concepts and style of film making.

Vegas always impresses me, it is the optimal all-in-one package for editing audio mixing and great looking title creations. But guys don't download programs, if anything, get the last years version. For example when Vegas 8 was just released (this was a while ago obviously), I bought the Vegas 6 (disk only) for only $70 off B&H. Or just get the Vegas 9 Movie Studio Platinum software for only $80, that's how I started, it has everything you need for bike videos in my opinion.

Question for FCP users, I transitioned from tape HDV to solid state using AVCHD format (to be exact, Panasonic HMC40, it shoots .mts files). I'm at a school that uses FCP which I've never used before and want to learn it. Now I'm a Avid Media Composer person, I love that program. This sounds dumb, can someone give me the steps on just how to import footage? I tried to bring in individual files on a thumb disk but I think you have to import through the camera?
flag ianfleming
Posted: Jan 19, 2010 at 11:19 Quote
Just search for workflow... I know how you feel. FCP is proving to be pretty complicated when it comes to making my 1080 24p work, and even more complitcated when it comes to working with my HV20. Are they using Final Cut Studio? Do the computers have Compressor? Compressor seems to be used alot in random workflow I've found, I just wish I could find some more basic workflow for working with an HV20.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Jan 19, 2010 at 11:58 Quote
ianfleming wrote:
Are they using Final Cut Studio? ... Do the computers have Compressor? Compressor seems to be used alot in random workflow I've found...

Hey thanks. They're using the most recent FCP systems, I know it's not Final Cut Studio, that's for sure. I will check the system specs when I go in tomorrow.

I think I found a way on youtube to import a different bunch of files that also convert to ProRes 422 (which is what I'll be doing, don't like editing with raw AVCHD files) called log and transfer.

I have not done any of this yet, but will go in with a bunch of clips ready to try it out.
flag ianfleming
Posted: Jan 19, 2010 at 19:03 Quote
Oh, it's far more complicated than log and transfer, I'm trying to remove the pulldown from my 24p HD footage, do you know what that is?

edit: ya, I think you're getting the picture on how to work with your footage.

Final Cut Studio is basically everything, it has Final Cut Pro 7, Soundtrack Pro 3, Motion 4 (like After Affects but by Apple, and not as f*cking awesome), Compressor 3.5, Color 1.5 and DVD Studio 4. Basically all you need to make a film.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/

It's f*cking radical.
flag ianfleming
Posted: Jan 19, 2010 at 19:11 Quote
Also, that "Leverage" video is extremely impressive, watch it, it shows you what Studio can do in terms of special effects.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 19, 2010 at 11:26 Quote
School project: Video and using the Color Wheel

by StuHaight
Views: 457    Faves: 4    Comments: 9


After seeing a video like this demonstrating the capabilities of Avid Media Composer what would you think of it?

Also how does FCP do when playing back clips WITH some effects like color correction and video fades without requiring to render and effect for seamless playback? It might just be the school computers (which aren't that badly spec'd actually) but some simple stuff causes a bit of lag.

Avid is able to do all the effects in real time except for the 'paint effect' demonstrated in the motorcycle video which provides the faded edges of the screen. That's the only drawback to Avid is it's a bit difficult to do simple stuff like fading the edges like 'iris' effects.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 19, 2010 at 13:15 Quote
adudeonabike wrote:
Avid > EVERYTHING else.

I like your thinking haha.

FCP USERS I'm starting to get a bit more comfortable with FCP but holy shit the keyboard layout is f-ed up, FCP is practically a DRAG AND DROP style unless you completely change the keyboard layout, I'm using my mouse for 95% of everything, so annoying and it's hurting my hand.

Since I cannot change the keyboard settings because I'm on different school computers, how do I disable the F10 - F12 keys to keep it from using the volume up/down/mute commands, and sometimes those F keys will cause all the windows to appear to easily switch from window to window... how do I set is so that I can use them as the SPLICE and OVERLAY in FCP???
flag sdcrash
Posted: Apr 28, 2010 at 15:04 Quote
ok everybody, i have a few questions... i have Magix movie edit pro 6 for my editing software. i know its not the best but i works. but i cant get my videos on pinkbike. i got em on youtube but the quality is crappy when i up load it. what format do you guys upload in and any ideas about gettin on here? also all my footage is from my go pro hero hd which is a mpeg4 format. thanks
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 28, 2010 at 19:04 Quote
It doesn't matter what format the footage is (well, it does, but the quality is already fine), what matters is what the completed sequence exports as.

If you can find a way to export "same as source" then use that. The problem is taking highly compressed mpeg4 footage and exporting it into a highly compressed format completed video can be tricky, you don't want to accidently take that footage and re-compress it, you just want to pass it through the editor...

My suggestion is to export your completed sequence into a high quality file that does not have compression (formats NOT to use: HDV, MPEG2, mpeg4, mp4, flv, mpg) try and find a file that uses a high quality quicktime output.

Once you have a high quality video (which should be large in size), re-import that completed video into your program and export it as some of these suggestions:

wmv: [frame size] [frame rate] kbps: 5000kbps CBR (constant bit rate) wmv9 or similar

H.264: same general thing...
flag sdcrash
Posted: Apr 28, 2010 at 19:42 Quote
StuHaight wrote:
It doesn't matter what format the footage is (well, it does, but the quality is already fine), what matters is what the completed sequence exports as.

If you can find a way to export "same as source" then use that. The problem is taking highly compressed mpeg4 footage and exporting it into a highly compressed format completed video can be tricky, you don't want to accidently take that footage and re-compress it, you just want to pass it through the editor...

My suggestion is to export your completed sequence into a high quality file that does not have compression (formats NOT to use: HDV, MPEG2, mpeg4, mp4, flv, mpg) try and find a file that uses a high quality quicktime output.

Once you have a high quality video (which should be large in size), re-import that completed video into your program and export it as some of these suggestions:

wmv: [frame size] [frame rate] kbps: 5000kbps CBR (constant bit rate) wmv9 or similar

H.264: same general thing...

Ok thanks a lot man ill try that out
flag SpikeX
Posted: Apr 29, 2010 at 1:02 Quote
StuHaight wrote:
It doesn't matter what format the footage is (well, it does, but the quality is already fine), what matters is what the completed sequence exports as.

If you can find a way to export "same as source" then use that. The problem is taking highly compressed mpeg4 footage and exporting it into a highly compressed format completed video can be tricky, you don't want to accidently take that footage and re-compress it, you just want to pass it through the editor...

My suggestion is to export your completed sequence into a high quality file that does not have compression (formats NOT to use: HDV, MPEG2, mpeg4, mp4, flv, mpg) try and find a file that uses a high quality quicktime output.

Once you have a high quality video (which should be large in size), re-import that completed video into your program and export it as some of these suggestions:

wmv: [frame size] [frame rate] kbps: 5000kbps CBR (constant bit rate) wmv9 or similar

H.264: same general thing...

H.264 is a variation of MPEG4. All formats are compressed, but how you set the encoder settings determines what the quality will be like. MPEG2 is the industry standard (although it's being replaced by H.264) so you can't say that it's a bad codec. Different codecs are used for different purposes. I'm personally a big fan of H.264 as it allows for very high quality in a small file size. The downside is that it takes more processing power to view and encode, but if that's a problem then just use MPEG2.

The problem is that you're telling him to export at 5,000KBps. That's what SD footage is exported as for DVDs. The GoPro records H.264 at 15,000KBps. So for a full quality 1080p video you'll want to export at around 16,000-17,000KBps (to accomodate for the VBR of the recording bitrate as well as titles and stuff, and to give you some headroom). For 720p web video I would go no lower than 7,000-8,000KBps. The bitrate is the single thing that makes the most different to video quality.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 29, 2010 at 7:02 Quote
SpikeX wrote:
H.264 is a variation of MPEG4. All formats are compressed, but how you set the encoder settings determines what the quality will be like. MPEG2 is the industry standard (although it's being replaced by H.264) so you can't say that it's a bad codec. Different codecs are used for different purposes. I'm personally a big fan of H.264 as it allows for very high quality in a small file size. The downside is that it takes more processing power to view and encode, but if that's a problem then just use MPEG2.

The problem is that you're telling him to export at 5,000KBps. That's what SD footage is exported as for DVDs. The GoPro records H.264 at 15,000KBps. So for a full quality 1080p video you'll want to export at around 16,000-17,000KBps (to accomodate for the VBR of the recording bitrate as well as titles and stuff, and to give you some headroom). For 720p web video I would go no lower than 7,000-8,000KBps. The bitrate is the single thing that makes the most different to video quality.

I just didn't want to go into too much detail and confuse him... but you are correct compressed footage is difficult to work with. I have a program called Avid Media Composer, and so far that is the only softare I've ever owned that handles HDV footage so well (I owned a Sony HDR-HC1) all other software I've used really struggles as far as real-time effects go. Obviously it took Sony Vegas a while to finally get software that handles it well, version 8 I believe handled it w/out a problem (but Vegas 6 performed horribly...)

My new cam shoots in AVCHD (MPEG4 H.264 same thing), the HMC40, maxes out at 25mbps in all modes I believe (I'm still researching about the 720 24pN mode, I think that's at 17mbps, because 30p over 60p looks way better which is at 25mbps...). Even though software like FCP 7 can import it natively, it's still incredibly painful to do anything with it, even Premiere Pro. Since I use Avid which will never make the switch to native handling of AVCHD, I just use my TMPGEnc 4.0 software and convert the AVCHD files to 422 DNxHD format (equivilent to Apple's ProRes). I do predict that you can convert apon importing to a format of your choice like DVCProHD or DNxHD bla bla bla...

Yes the result file size is big, but HDD's now adays are suuuper cheep, to me it's way worth it to spend a little extra time converting to a more stable format for editing, plus when you export from the timeline you get that native DHxHD file as a high quality intermediete that you can then compress for different applications (mainly just the web, lol).

"telling him to export at 5000kbps" I suggest that because (at least for youtube, I'm still experimenting with pinkbike video quality) what you don't want is to have pinkbike RE-COMPRESS what was already compressed. If I'm able to find the 'sweet spot' for what exactly pinkbike uses then literally when I upload a video it'll just copy to their video archive and not even convert/compress the video. When you upload a 15,000kbps file, it'll see that it's quite large and it will re-compress it to about 5000kbps anyways.

Youtube is really good at this. I've been very happy with the results of uploading a windows media video file (.wmv), 720p only, no difference in 1080 youtube quality, at 6000 kbps for both 30p and 24p.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 29, 2010 at 7:07 Quote
I just realized you use Premiere pro to edit. How is it handling the footage from your sony cam?
flag SpikeX
Posted: Apr 29, 2010 at 7:17 Quote
StuHaight wrote:
SpikeX wrote:
H.264 is a variation of MPEG4. All formats are compressed, but how you set the encoder settings determines what the quality will be like. MPEG2 is the industry standard (although it's being replaced by H.264) so you can't say that it's a bad codec. Different codecs are used for different purposes. I'm personally a big fan of H.264 as it allows for very high quality in a small file size. The downside is that it takes more processing power to view and encode, but if that's a problem then just use MPEG2.

The problem is that you're telling him to export at 5,000KBps. That's what SD footage is exported as for DVDs. The GoPro records H.264 at 15,000KBps. So for a full quality 1080p video you'll want to export at around 16,000-17,000KBps (to accomodate for the VBR of the recording bitrate as well as titles and stuff, and to give you some headroom). For 720p web video I would go no lower than 7,000-8,000KBps. The bitrate is the single thing that makes the most different to video quality.

I just didn't want to go into too much detail and confuse him... but you are correct compressed footage is difficult to work with. I have a program called Avid Media Composer, and so far that is the only softare I've ever owned that handles HDV footage so well (I owned a Sony HDR-HC1) all other software I've used really struggles as far as real-time effects go. Obviously it took Sony Vegas a while to finally get software that handles it well, version 8 I believe handled it w/out a problem (but Vegas 6 performed horribly...)

My new cam shoots in AVCHD (MPEG4 H.264 same thing), the HMC40, maxes out at 25mbps in all modes I believe (I'm still researching about the 720 24pN mode, I think that's at 17mbps, because 30p over 60p looks way better which is at 25mbps...). Even though software like FCP 7 can import it natively, it's still incredibly painful to do anything with it, even Premiere Pro. Since I use Avid which will never make the switch to native handling of AVCHD, I just use my TMPGEnc 4.0 software and convert the AVCHD files to 422 DNxHD format (equivilent to Apple's ProRes). I do predict that you can convert apon importing to a format of your choice like DVCProHD or DNxHD bla bla bla...

Yes the result file size is big, but HDD's now adays are suuuper cheep, to me it's way worth it to spend a little extra time converting to a more stable format for editing, plus when you export from the timeline you get that native DHxHD file as a high quality intermediete that you can then compress for different applications (mainly just the web, lol).

"telling him to export at 5000kbps" I suggest that because (at least for youtube, I'm still experimenting with pinkbike video quality) what you don't want is to have pinkbike RE-COMPRESS what was already compressed. If I'm able to find the 'sweet spot' for what exactly pinkbike uses then literally when I upload a video it'll just copy to their video archive and not even convert/compress the video. When you upload a 15,000kbps file, it'll see that it's quite large and it will re-compress it to about 5000kbps anyways.

Youtube is really good at this. I've been very happy with the results of uploading a windows media video file (.wmv), 720p only, no difference in 1080 youtube quality, at 6000 kbps for both 30p and 24p.

I really don't care about size either. I have 2TB of storage space onboard and a further 4TB externally, so that's not a problem for me at all.

Premiere handles AVCHD footage very well. I get realtime playback of 16Mbps AVCHD 1080i (so it has to deinterlace live too) with no hiccups at all. It's more down to your computer hardware than anything.

Actually, PinkBike will re-convert your video regardless of the bitrate. It has to convert all videos to FLV to play back in Flash Player, so it always has to convert. If it's given a 15,000Kb/sec video and it converts it to 5,000Kb/sec for playback, there will be MUCH less quality loss than if it converts from a 5,000Kb/sec video to a 5,000Kb/sec video.

I find the best website for raw quality is Vimeo. They use the highest bitrates and have great encoders and converters, and recently they've added support for 1080p. YouTube doesn't do a bad job at all with 720p, but 1080p doesn't look very nice because they've had to keep the bitrate low.
flag StuHaight
Posted: Apr 29, 2010 at 7:32 Quote
I quoted myself that Avid cannot import AVCHD nativly I guess I was wrong. AvidMC 5.0 does...

"You want more? Guess what? I got more. This is going to be one LONG article.

AVCHD import. Before now you had to use third party applications to convert the footage to DNxHD, like ClipWrap. Not anymore. Now you can import the AVCHD footage directly into Avid MC via the IMPORT feature."

full article... good read, I guess FCP users are wanting some FCP features like being able to access the timeline, which avid gives users the option to toggle between that feature and the traditional avid interface. Personally I HATE having to use the mouse for every damn little thing in FCP, it's impossible especially when doing precise edit cuts. AND it can import ProRes nativly, how they worked that out with Apple I don't know. Does FCP accept DNxHD???

http://lfhd.net/2010/04/25/nab-2010-avid-5-0/

 


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