Video Editor for Band Performances?

[zstringer999]

Hi all,

I record my band's performances using a little Zoom video/audio recorder. I use use Pinnacle Studio 23 to edit the videos. Pinnacle is very powerful but has a learning curve.

Just wondering what video editor you are using? I'm working on a Windows 11 PC.

Thanks!
Peter

 

[happyrat1]

It won't help you but for anyone creating on a mac I use iMovie and Magic Music Visualizer for my videos.

 

[Biggles]

By a country mile the industry standard is Adobe Premiere which is only available via subscription.

A great free one for a Windows PC is Da Vinci Resolve, by Black Magic Design who are the developers and they are the masters in video FX.

The downside is that both do take some learning but for straight cuts, J and L cuts, cutaways they are very easy to get proficient enough to create.

Following Gary’s lead for Mac and IOS, Android and Chrome then do take a look at the LumaTouch website at their Luma Fusion video editing App. It is what I use on my MacBook and iPad, it is vastly better than other Apps for my own needs.

 

[anotherscott]

I don't have enough knowledge here to speak with authority, but I've been using a free cross-platform app called Shotcut and find it pretty impressive... sometimes a little confusing, but ultimately not that bad, and probably the easiest I've found, since Apple discontinued the original iMovie platform over 15 years ago.

 

[happyrat1]

What was so great about iMovie 15 years ago? It seems pretty straightforward to me these days.

 

[anotherscott]

From wikipedia:

iMovie 08 was criticized due to its drastic abandonment of some iMovie HD 6 features. Former New York Times reviewer David Pogue said "iMovie '08 is an utter bafflement... incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable...All visual effects are gone — even basic options like slow motion, reverse motion, fast motion, and black-and-white. And you can't have more than one project open at a time."[19] Features removed included the classic timeline, the ability to create DVD chapter markers, support for plugins, and in-timeline audio adjustment and control. iMovie '08 imported a much more limited set of video codecs and metadata formats than previous versions of iMovie or the then-current version QuickTime Player. For example, QuickTime Player could be extended to support the FLIP Video 3ivx MPEG-4 codec, but iMovie '08 could not. iMovie '08 also removed the ability to import DV footage. As a result, all resulting videos had lossy compression applied and there was no facility for managing full format video. The peculiar lack of QuickTime support means QuickTime Pro could edit a larger range of video than iMovie '08.

I liked the old version better for a variety of those reasons, but in terms of the "ease of use" aspect, I think it was the timeline implementation and also simpler basic file management (e.g. having "Save As...", among other differences).

 

[Biggles]

As you already have a pretty good Video Editing App one could argue why change.

30+ years ago I got into video editing with a product by a company that was bought by Pinnacle, their software worked great, but at that time it was a very basic for video editing.

Now Pinnacle Studio is far from basic, it is a very powerful App that is great VFM especially when the likes of Adobe Premiere is available but does cost rather a lot.

What I am leading up to is yes, there is a learning curve, but that is the same for all Apps.

Take it from me, the App is very simple and straightforward, it just looks complicated. Simply take it easy one step at a time, learn the more powerful features as and when you need them. The filters inbuilt and colourisation features alone make it worthwhile.

One thing in its favour is the Multi Track feature, I would never suggest any Video Editing App that does not have this feature as layering video does make creativity vastly more of an easier task.

Watch the video tutorials and you will be surprised at how quick it all comes together.

If you download Da Vinci Resolve you will find that way more complicated to use, yes it is more powerful than Pinnacle Studio but its learning curve is far steeper.

There are other Video Editing Apps out there and a company called Magix bought a batch of Sony products, one was the video editing app Vegas and the other the sound editing app Sound Forge. Both of these are world class but both have steep learning curves.

There is also Cyberlink PowerDirector, which IMO is best avoided.

Finally Lightworks, free for the basic but export is limited to 720p, a paid for version gives more export choice. I did use it many years ago whilst it was still in Beta form and it was impressive and easy to use.

 

[zstringer999]

Thanks for all of your ideas and suggestions. Pinnacle is great software, very full featured, but it is very sluggish on my Windows 11 PC (Dell Intel I7, 16GB Ram). I've been playing around with Shotcut and am very impressed by its speed. Way more responsive than Pinnacle.