Good Video Editing Software?

[tifc8lraz]

For an English Project, we need to make a trailer of the book, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald...and my group and I have already recorded a bunch of scenes, and now I am going to go and put it together into a trailer and add special effects.

The only thing now is that I need to find some good software to get the job done...I have heard about Sony Vegas, and Adobe Premier CS3, but I am not sure what all the options are out there, and was wondering if anyone knew of any other good programs .

 

[captaincranky]

Premier CS3 is about $600.00 USD. Maybe Premier Elements, I think it's on version 4.0 now ($100.00 USD list) Get some second opinions though, I have version 1.0 which I rarely use.

 

[Daproblemis]

Media

What format is it on? VCR?

 

[captaincranky]

Not quite sure what you mean.........

Literally, the answer to your question is DVD. The program comes on a DVD. I think what you're asking is what file formats it would accept for import and editing.

Here is a link to Adobe's documentation page for PE: http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/premiere_elements/

A free trial of PE4 is not available as of now. Adobe claims it will be available July 1st.

I'm thinking it will handle all of the popular DV Cam and video formats you might want to import. But, it will NOT import DVD-Video files. Here I'm guessing that Adobe doesn't want to pay the licensing fee, while empowering their customer's ability to infringe on copyrights. PE's native capture format is Firewire, other formats would need to be saved to the HDD first.

Obviously this is the link to just look around in general: http://www.adobe.com/

 

[barberic]

I see you have XP Pro operating system. This includes Windows Movie maker. It's a very basic program but will be good enough for what you are trying to do. I am still using Premiere 6.0 and haven't yet found any reason to upgrade. Good luck with your project.

 

[SNGX1275]

Yeh, Movie Maker really isn't that bad. Assuming this isn't a senior project at a 4 year college/university you probably don't need all the features of Premier. Also if anyone in your group has a Mac, problem solved, iMovie(HD) and iDVD will do an excellent job.

 

[Eigfrost]

If it's of any use, there's a review of Premier Elements 4 here:

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s546.htm

Hope that helps!