4 free video editors bring out your inner filmmaker
By Howard Wen | February 2, 2010 06:00 AM ET
Computerworld - Shooting footage with a video camera is easy. Assembling the random footage into something watchable can be a whole other matter. Working with professional-level video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro can cost a good deal and also means a very steep learning curve.
If you only want to do occasional editing for YouTube videos, there are some inexpensive applications available, such as Adobe Premiere Elements ($80), Pinnacle Studio HD ($50) and Sony Movie Studio HD ($40). But if you're really strapped for cash, there are a number of free tools out there that can do the job quite nicely.
For this roundup, I looked at the Windows versions of three free desktop programs (Avidemux, Wax and Windows Live Movie Maker) and at a Web-based editor (JayCut).
From: leonsk [#2] 2 Feb 20:27 To: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#1] 2 Feb 20:41
The Linux version of Avidemux is very good and has abundant tutorial info on the web. As far as I can determine there is no video capture function so only limited use for VHS->HD file conversions.
From: leonsk [#4] 2 Feb 21:22 To: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#3] 2 Feb 21:31
Don't know about the tuner card but many video cards used to have a video input port, maybe some still do. But in either case that's the raw signal from the tape deck and requires analog->digital conversion, which can be a bit of hassle to set up and to sync with the audio signal which in such cases gets input using the audio-in jack.
The Canopus box takes the three RCA plugs (L-R audio + video) from VHF player as input, processes the signals to digital stream then outputs via a EEE1394 into the computer. The video processing program eg. Pinnacle 9, recognizes the signal stream as a DV camera output and captures all very clean and simple. Believe me, the biggest nuisance in the VHS tape conversion is setting up the capture part.
Of course the simplest solution is to get one of those VHS->DVD boxes eg. from Sony (shudder). I believe such are available for under US$300. Pop in the tape and a DVD blank, quick selection and come back several hours later for the burned DVD.
From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#5] 2 Feb 21:39 To: leonsk [#4] 2 Feb 21:49
One of my brothers has one of those VHS->DVD boxes. I think it's about 4 years old now, and has made approximately 0 disks. He says it's "too complicated", but he's also got a houseful of Apple equipment, so you have to take that sort of judgement with a grain of salt <grin>
Don't know about the tuner card but many video cards used to have a video input port, maybe some still do. But in either case that's the raw signal from the tape deck and requires analog->digital conversion, which can be a bit of hassle to set up and to sync with the audio signal which in such cases gets input using the audio-in jack.
The analog-to-digital conversion is done by an IC on the video card. Sometimes there are sync issues but if it's a fixed error, such as sound always being, say, 100 msec off from the video, you can frequently skew the A/V sync when transcoding. I know ffpeg can do this as I have used ffmpeg to fix this very problem.
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The Canopus box takes the three RCA plugs (L-R audio + video) from VHF player as input, processes the signals to digital stream then outputs via a EEE1394 into the computer. The video processing program eg. Pinnacle 9, recognizes the signal stream as a DV camera output and captures all very clean and simple. Believe me, the biggest nuisance in the VHS tape conversion is setting up the capture part.
The capture is not much of a problem if you're using any sort of capture card with both audio and video inputs. Mplayer can capture video from any V4L/V4L2 device and the AV will remain in sync as it captures as long as the original source had good AV sync. I've converted days worth of VHS video using a cheapie "software" analog tuner card and the hardest thing about it was dealing with the 60 GB/hr raw AV files it captures off the RCA ports. I just converted them to DV to edit in Kino with ffmpeg and I was good to go. I've also used a hardware MPEG-2 encoder card and it was similarly easy to work with, but without the huge raw files to deal with. However, I had to put that card back in my HTPC as my wife sorely missed not being able to record her shows when I was converting video- hence I picked up a $30 DVB/software NTSC card to do the VHS conversion.
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Of course the simplest solution is to get one of those VHS->DVD boxes eg. from Sony (shudder). I believe such are available for under US$300. Pop in the tape and a DVD blank, quick selection and come back several hours later for the burned DVD.
Well, it's simple but only if you want no more than to convert the video on the VHS tape to DVD verbatim. Generally you'd like to edit the video before you burn it so you can break it up into chapters, remove static between scenes, and also make a backup copy on your computer. You would have to rip the DVD the Sony machine made, edit the ripped video files, and then burn a new DVD to do that. It would be more hassle than just doing the capture-edit-burn method.