A good, easy to use video editor?

richardjones

New member
My friends and I have shot some videos for creating a promo video of an event we are organizing. We have the raw video files with us and want to edit and create a great promo. The problem is that none of us knows much about video editing. We have some ideas, but don’t know how to implement it. We thought about handing the job to some professional video production company in Toronto, but we have budget constraints which prevent us from hiring them. We are looking for a good but easy to learn and use video editing software and obviously looking for a free one. I know about limitations of free softwares, but we are not looking to produce a highly professional quality video. I hope someone got our requirements and could suggest something that can be of use for us.
 
Are you mac or pc?

If PC, Windows Moviemaker is free (and sometimes comes as an accessory), and does a reasonable job.

You can invest in Sony Vegas and get a versatile, easy to use program which does an excellent job
 
Fundamentally, like audio software, almost every video editing software does the same stuff with very little variance in terms of splicing,transitions, compositing, and titling. The difference is going to be the artistic use of the tools and materials... and as far as software is concerned... the ease of using those tools.
 
I made my first ever music video on Mac using iMovie. They say its now a sibling of much more powerful pro app, Final Cut Pro.
I found iMovie enough for my needs and published the first music on youtube and it has been even shown on TV :)
 
Having tried Windows movie maker (XP and Vista+ versions), VirtualDub, VirtualDubMod, Avid e mux, and Sony Movie Studio (consumer version of Vegas), I can't honestly recommend any of them. :P

Video editing is pretty awful. Movie Studio is ok, if you can get it to cooperate with your hardware and you can get past the succession of bad UX decisions they made.
 
I just finished a college class where we used Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects...I found it fairly intuitive (after a few tutorials) and it has pretty deep abilities (on the pro side). Adobe CC suite is a monthly subscription based suite. Student is 20 US and non-student is more- around 50 I think not sure.

Do you know any (communication major) college students who have access to a computer lab on campus? They might help you with your video and show you the software also.
 
Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X and Avid Media Composer are the big ones. They are very much not free though. I reckon iMovie is pretty good for a free piece of software. If you're on a Windows machine then try something like Avid Pinnacle Studio? It's not free but very cheap as it's a real home-editor program. Everyone around here seems to use Sony Vegas.. I feel you get more user-friendly software out there, and if you're spending the money on Vegas, you are far better off buying Premiere.
 
I have tried premiere elements 10 and think it's OK, it just about has enough power for a PC, it can handle 1080p no problem but isn't great for options and can only do basic editing, easily good enough for youtube though, it works a lot better on a mac for some reason, it's as if all adobe products are rigged to work on mac's.
 
Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X and Avid Media Composer are the big ones. They are very much not free though. I reckon iMovie is pretty good for a free piece of software. If you're on a Windows machine then try something like Avid Pinnacle Studio? It's not free but very cheap as it's a real home-editor program. Everyone around here seems to use Sony Vegas.. I feel you get more user-friendly software out there, and if you're spending the money on Vegas, you are far better off buying Premiere.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio is something like $30. I've always found Vegas to be incredibly fast and efficient to use. But I have been using it or one of its relatives (CD Architect, Video Factory) for something like 15 years. I use the full version for recording/mixing/mastering audio.
 
If you want something really easy to use, Windows movie maker for PC and imovie for Mac are very user friendly. But if you're looking for higher video quality, I would recommend something else like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. While these programs may not be as user friendly, there's a bunch of videos on youtube that you can look up that can really help you out when using them.
 
Sony Vegas Movie Studio is something like $30. I've always found Vegas to be incredibly fast and efficient to use. But I have been using it or one of its relatives (CD Architect, Video Factory) for something like 15 years. I use the full version for recording/mixing/mastering audio.

Yeah, Sony Movie Studio is cheap and can do a lot for $30. I find it very fast at editing clips and I think it's a great program especially because of all the audio stuff it can do.
 
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