Video Editing Software

[Gary Parker]

I am going to start exploring making videos for my web site. I am going to use a 1080dpi HD web cam. I will also be using a Cannon digital camera for other videos. I am very new to this and want to do some "amateur" stuff before I decide if I should get professional videos done.

My wish list is:
Low cost or free at first but will pay if I like
Need to merge two videos, 1 from web cam & 1 from camera, on occasion
Easy format to upload to youtube
The obvious cut and paste edit stuff

Any suggestions?

[Jon Holdman]

The Mac one is iMovie. It actually does quite a bit. Its big brother is Final Cut Pro. The latest version is $299, down from $999 a few years ago. This is truly a professional video editor. A lot of what you see in movies and TV is edited with Final Cut Pro. Ten years ago you would have spend 10's or 100's of thousands to get the capabilities in Final Cut Pro. You can get a 30 day free trial, but I would spend time with iMovie before you do this. The learning curve is steep.

I've not used Sony Vegas, but it looks like a decent program if you're stuck on the PC for this task. The higher end versions are also professional programs.

The other big dog in this space is Avid. You probably don't want to go there.

If you're going to be doing stuff on the screen you want to capture and include, I highly recommend Camtasia. Its about $100 and is a fantastic and easy to use tool to capture what you're doing on the screen and then edit it.

I also highly recommend Vincent Laforet's blog. He was one of the early adopters of using the Canon DSLR's for video and has a ton of good info on how to do it well.

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/

Be careful, though, or you'll be lusting after lenses like this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/687427-REG/Zeiss_1834_248_Compact_Prime_CP_2_28mm_T2_1.html

That's just one out of a set of about eight.