My friends and I are getting some stuff together. None of it is ground-breaking yet, but I want to know about editing stuff. We have had a couple of hours of footage around for a while. What is the best equipment on a budget.

I'm going to be buying a computer next month, and that plus internet access will be its only purpose. What kind of software should I look into that isn't too expensive? What kind of hardware would work better than computer based editing tools? About how much will I be looking to spend, or should I just hire someone to do it?

I've done some lame stuff with just two VCRs and a gay mixer. Right now it looks about like old Starboy stuff. Some of the ideas I have are working out really well, I just want better quality.

thanks

 

with hardware based editing, you will mostly only be able to do straight cuts with limited transitions (fades, mostly). that kneecaps you pretty bad.. but then again, how most stunt videos nowadays look like a ****ing high school video editing class made them, maybe the editing police need to come in and restrict most people to only straight cuts lol.

anyway, are you buying mac or PC? you'll want to do all your editing offlined from the camera (meaning on the machine), in the program of your choice. the main choices for most people on the consumer level look like this...

premiere
final cut pro
vegas
avid

i would never reccomend premiere to anyone. vegas is competent, and most consumer-level users wouldn't notice many bugs in it. avid is solid and reliable. FCP is the industry standard for digital video editing, but only available on mac. if you buy a mac, use FCP4. this software will range from $400 to the $1000 range.

what kind of camera are you using? what will this eventually be used for? if you plan to make a DVD or similar production that you will intend to sell for money, camera-quality is an issue. using only 3CCD cameras is a must. also, learning about proper shooting techniques is probly a good idea.. i.e. tripods, focus and exposure, manipulating depth of field, framing for aspect ratio and overscan, using the zoom properly, etc.

also, dont underestimate the amount of footage it takes to put together a good production. With our recently released DVD, "reasonable doubt" (see www.apexfilms.com for trailers, etc) we had over 110 60minute tapes.. for a DVD whose eventual length was a bit over an hour with bonus footage.

again, i go back to "what do you plan to do with this?" if you plan to make a DVD and not make any real money off of it.. just have some fun, buy what you can afford, and have a good time. if you plan to make a DVD and want to make money off of it, consider hiring someone to do the editing for you.

PM me if you have any questions and i'll help you out.

 

i'm getting a PC, so it sounds like you are recommending Vegas or Avid. it sounds like I will go with one of those, (whichever is cheaper.)

At this point, we are just doing it to show friends what kind of stuff we are into. We are just using a JVC miniDV camera, so the quality, for the most part, is junk. It looks okay, but I know we will eventually want to go better. As far as making money off of it, none of the riding is really that great. It's just long wheelies, a few tank-slappers, short stoppies, and some short 12's. I figure Ive got pleanty of time to learn the editing process before we invest in a cooler camera to get some good stuff. (like this summer)

what program is your fav for PC editing?

thanks for the input. i'm sure i'll have more questions for you.

 

vegas 4 would probably work best for you.. and is relatively cheap, esp. if you know a student who can get a discount on it.

 

what software did you use for reasonable doubt???

 

We use Vegas and some supplementary composition products. We can almost afford my new toy, then I can really get my compositor skills kicked up. You would think working three jobs could pay the bills.....

 

And why is that?

 

Hmm.. it crashes so much you have to save every 45 seconds.. and then half the time the act of saving actually crashes it, lol. ..for starters :D


Off the top of my head.. it doesn't afford enough velocity manipulation controls, it doesn't let you step forward or backward in small enough incriments. Large projects cause a lot of weird memory leaks and stuff that eventually can crash it. It chokes when you try to do a lot of heavy rendering (for instance, for the credits on our video.. i wanted to do a video in video window, with the inner video having 2-3 moving gaussian points.. ).. i couldn't get it to ever render the whole thing without crashing. basically, it's not as robust as i'd like. and it crashes too much (any crashing is too much) when you have really large projects open.

it's not a bad program though.. it has a lot of nice built in plugins that many other NLE's of the same level don't have.. and is fairly intuitive to use. it's a good suite for anyone to start with..

 

Thanks for the info, dude. That's a LOT of good information. I'll be hitting you up when it comes time. I wish you still lived here in Washington.

 

hey gage, my bro AlexF4i is pretty handy with Vega s/w. I don't think he'd mind answering any of your questions. Check this link out...Click here It's probably what your looking for in hardware. l8r.

-jr

 

i got vegas for free so thats what i use

 

no problem. we're up there periodically.. probly be up there more this summer when it's super friggin hot here. just lemme know when you have questions.

 

Dude! you gotta let me know when you come up so i can ride with ya. No one here rides like this anymore in Aberdeen. I'll meet ya up north.

 

premier problems
keep the projects small, like break a 60 minute project into 5 or 6 sections, then when you are done inport them into one file. or if you have a place where you can break up the video, like a 3 second piece of black video, break it up, save the piece as an AVI, then import it into the big final project.
premier doesent have to render a AVI

plus if you are going to make a DVD, its best to edit break up a whole video into sections, because when you convert to Mpeg 2 it takes like all day for a 60 minute flick, if you do it in sections, and you then notice a problem, you only have to re-convert that one section, not the whole movie, it also works better for making chapters.

get a pentium 4, not you should get one, GET one
with the biggest hard drive you can afford, then get another big hard drive. store all your raw video on the extra "F:" drive and use the C drive for runing your system

but you are right about premier crashing when working on big files, rendering is a bitch, i have noticed that when rendering something complicated, and long, let it render like 1500 frames, stop it, save it, then render 1500 more frames, that will keep it from crashing.

 

edit each section separatly. then send each section to a mini dv tape one at a time, in order that you want your video to flow. this keeps your jobs small and simple!

 

great info guys keep it coming.... any web sight or reading suggestions for a newbie filmmaker? I bought a mini dv(Sony trv39), and am in the process of learning the basics and getting my hardware, and software together. Any pointers? I want to shot decent footage, and edit it for the web, mepeg2 format I guess. this is just a hobby so nothing to serious, but I would like to make cool , stylish , videos.

 

carzy dan's idea works too, if you are going to send it to someone to make the final product (DVD or Tape)

but with the personal software out today, you can make your own DVD.
just keep the projects small and seperate, until they are all done, then bring them all together

another pointer for Premier
when you have your video in project form, then export to tape, you will get very small glitches, like say on a simple transition, the clip that is fading will sometimes shine through at the end, sometimes this might look cool, like you ment for that to happen, but most of the time it is a ****in pain.
do this
convert the individual projects to AVI, then create a new project that is composed of only big *** AVI files, then export them to tape, or export the individual AVI files to tape one at a time.

when you export from a project the computer has to find source clips, make calculations, then play it on the camera to record, when the whole file is an AVI, all premier has to do is play it, no calculating. therfore no glitches.

final cut is bomb, but premier with after effects can do just about anything you want, till it gets so damn complicated you want to kill yourself, and alot more peeps have experience with premier, so it is easy to get help.

 

I figured it was fairly intuitive that you would be cutting the video project into sections to match the chapters on the DVD, and then eventually transcoding them into one single section with chapter mark points. Not everyone does their own authoring though, i know..

Also, as far as mpegII taking all day.. haha.. we had segments in our video where the final rendering of 1 MINUTE of video took 12 hours. Nef knows what i'm talking about hehe.

I'm not sure why you're printing back to tape.. maybe to give the tape to someone else to rip and author for you? but yea, the general idea (from my view) is to edit in whatever sections the project will eventually be divided into.

i don't know about the projects you guys have had, but like i said, on large projects.. vegas crashes a lot. and when i said larger, i didn't mean 45 minutes of video in the timeline, i meant 3-4 minutes of video with a lot of processing done to it. also, vegas chokes even worse on uncompressed video versus DV.

 

also, convert your whole project to AVI before converting it to Mpeg2, this is for the same reason as stated above, it reduces the work load on the processor. this takes up alot of memory, but it makes the final product look exactly how you edited it.

project A
convert to Project A.AVI
import Project A.avi into new premier project
export, adobe mpeg encoder
use the DVD medium setting, unless you used a TV quality 20,000 dollar camera, then you might have to play with the settings. but even with the PD150 we did not notice a lower quality on the final product with the medium setting, on the highest quality setting, it takes up way to much space on the DVD
also on the highest setting the bit rate may spike too high on complicated parts of the video, then the DVD will not mutliplex

ok, i know i just got way to complicated