DAW software for editing, is free software as good as purchased software?

Hi jamesperrett! Thanks as I might try Reaper over Da Vinci Resolve. So Da Vinci is not good because of their trying to sell you more and maybe not offering much to start? Is their product very expensive?

Reaper is a DAW, a digital audio workstation. I understand it has some basic video editing capability. It's free to try and something like $60 for a non-commercial license. DaVinci Resolve is a very complete video editing program (NLE, nonlinear editor). The free version of resolve is supposed to be fairly capable.

I might put in free clips I find of beautiful scenes for my first debut video on YouTube. I tried to use my Zoom Q8 to capture a beautiful sunset and moon rise here 2 evenings ago and it was a joke, very poor quality, i.e. the moon was big to the naked eye, but a tiny dot with the q8, and the sunset was beautiful red but just a bright almost colorless light and clouds instead of beautiful reddish were just gray, and all appearing much farther away, even with full zoom. I know now I'll have to find free clips of beautiful scenes to maybe patch into my video. Will that be real difficult? Have you seen any good video tutorial about the Zoom Q8 and how to use it, meaning with musician's applications? Zoom only has instructions for using it like a web cam, or what is presented as instruction tutorial is just advertising how great the q8 is. Thanks for you input!

From what I can see the Q8 is a minimal operator input kind of camera. There are a few presets and little other control. A proper camcorder will have more options for dealing with different light situations and also have an optical zoom. Most camcorders will have at least an indoor/outdoor color balance control and some kind of shutter speed and iris adjustment, including automatic options. If you scrounge pawn shops etc. you should be able to score one for $100, maybe less.
 
Reaper is a DAW, a digital audio workstation. I understand it has some basic video editing capability. It's free to try and something like $60 for a non-commercial license. DaVinci Resolve is a very complete video editing program (NLE, nonlinear editor). The free version of resolve is supposed to be fairly capable.
From what I can see the Q8 is a minimal operator input kind of camera. There are a few presets and little other control. A proper camcorder will have more options for dealing with different light situations and also have an optical zoom. Most camcorders will have at least an indoor/outdoor color balance control and some kind of shutter speed and iris adjustment, including automatic options. If you scrounge pawn shops etc. you should be able to score one for $100, maybe less.


Hi Again Bouldersoundguy!!

Thanks for your great input once again!! I guess I could get a refund as I've only had the camera since Monday 5-4-20. I got the camera because I noticed other musicians used it for YouTube videos, only at this website I find nothing really about the Zoom q8. Is that because a lot don't like the camera? It's been out since 2015. I just posted a new thread about it trying to find any tutorials about it, or literature as the owner's manual isn't very good. YouTube has unboxings, reviews, and some partial tutorials... but not a full tutorial, and neither does the Zoom company site... The q8 is very good for audio where I wonder about the cameras you suggest, if they have good audio or not. I also like all in one camera as then I don't have to worry about synchronization with the video and the audio... I guess. I don't know much and easily get into areas I don't know anything about. With the q8 there's 48 volts phantom power and XLR hookup for my two large diaphragm condenser mics I bought 17 years ago back when I had money.

I really splurged and spent $716 on the q8 and other things I needed to get a video going. When I tried to video a sunset and moon rise the other day it proves very poor for outdoor things, but was okay indoors and of myself playing guitar. The only thing is I'm nothing to look at ha! I'm starting with a popular cover song only maybe too popular with my debut to attract people to what will mainly be my originals. I've never played in public my guitar nor have sung at all until recent last 2yrs once I moved to the "big city" and got brave enough to go to open mics. I was very surprised people were liking my music. I credit them for believing more in myself and writing new music. It's a big leap for me on my limited income now, but I'd like to give it a try, create nice quality music videos on a low budget if I can.

So you think the q8 is a mistake? What if I just use it for indoor shots with lights on me and get free video clips to edit in from sites like Pixabay or Shutterstock (I can't think of other names but tried Shutterstock once and very pushy about subscribing etc. when I was trying to get their free photos as candidates for my novel covers with a trilogy I wrote.) If I had to I'd buy some of the nicer video clips I saw. My debut is "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell so nice clips of clouds, maybe ocean waves crashing ashore, seabirds gliding etc. Is what I mention plausible from your pro perspective?

Thanks!
Winfred
 
I can't say if the Q8 is a mistake. It's a tool with certain limitations. The cameras I use don't prioritize good audio so I use a Zoom H5 to capture audio and sync it to the videos. It's not all that hard, you just match the Zoom audio to the camera audio. I actually get OCD and nudge the keeper audio around until it's perfect because the audio tracks that cameras record is usually slightly early relative to the video.


Here's what it looks like when I have all the video tracks and the finished audio in a Vegas Pro project. Each audio is attached to (grouped with) its respective video track. If you move the audio track, you move the video that goes with it. The first step is to get all the audio tracks roughly matched up. Then I fine tune the video sync by looking at drum hits or other distinctive motions. When I drop the finished audio in I first match it up to the camera audio, then I fine tune it until it looks absolutely right. But this is with six cameras plus the finished audio track. With one camera it's a much simpler process.

audio-video sync.png
 
I think the Q8 is designed primarily for indoor recording of relatively close-in subjects, as you would get in blog type videos. The lens system is a 160 degree wide angle, so its not going to do well for outdoor unless you want a panorama. I'm sure that's the reason you saw such a small moon in your shot. It will actually have quite a lot of fish-eye look. You can really see it when you zoom in for closeups.

I have an old Sanyo video camera, and the problem with it in small areas is that it doesn't capture a very wide field, even when zoomed fully out. Its fine for outdoor shots, with a 10x optical zoom plus a digital zoom feature as well. Audio isn't its strongest point either. Its ok for home movies at Christmas.

The ideal seems to be a digital SLR system where you have changeable lenses with good zoom capabilities, but now you're talking about more money for a really quality rig.

Do you by chance, have a smartphone that you could use for outdoor shots? Some of the phones have pretty amazing cameras in them these days.
 
Hi jamesperrett! Thanks as I might try Reaper over Da Vinci Resolve. So Da Vinci is not good because of their trying to sell you more and maybe not offering much to start?

Da Vinci is almost certainly the more capable of those two with more video options on offer and is well worth trying. I just get on with Reaper better because I'm more of an audio person than a video person and I don't think in terms of clips like most video editors do.
 
This is getting silly! I can edit video in Cubase now as it can export it, so could do some cuts to music but WHY on earth would you do this? Editing video needs far more than cuts! Price of software means you choose for you. Open office, audacity, resolve and things like mandelbulb 3D are super products while some paid for products can be rubbish - for you. For me, speed, features and effectiveness make the decision easy. Editing video in an audio app or editing audio in a video editor is very weird. I pay Adobe because for me it's a good use of my money. I sill use audacity sometimes if it makes sense despite having multiple ways to edit audio. Common sense is missing in some posts here.
 
Editing video needs far more than cuts!

I don't know if this is a response to the mentions of Reaper but, Reaper does far more than just cuts. All the basic effects are there as well as a few transitions and you can do things like titling, deinterlace, resize, chromakey and use multiple video tracks. You can even write your own video processing plug-ins if you want. It offers enough for most of the things that I do.
 
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