What video editing software do you use?

  • Thread starter Thread starter arcadeko
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That's one difference between running a commercial operation vs sitting in the basement and doing personal work. I'm running PowerDirector 15. They are currently selling PD 21, so I'm 6 versions behind. They also went to a 365 subscription, although you can still get a perpetual license. I bought Reaper at V 4.7x, I'm still running 5.99. Since I'm not exchanging files with anyone except for final products or raw files, I don't lose compatibility. I will probably upgrade to Reaper 7 when it comes out.

If I was doing commercial work where I was required to exchange files, it would be a different story. I remember having issues at work when some people had upgraded versions of MS Office. They would send spreadsheets that didn't open and operate correctly. They completely changed MS Access, which broke some of our internal applications. Microsoft seems to think this is a good thing, as it obsoletes product. It's a royal pain in the butt when critical things don't work anymore. We didn't have people to rewrite apps that had been created, and the corporate IS department wasn't interested in helping.

Our plant had a quality assurance worksheet system that was written in Lotus 123 for DOS. It was running from the time I wrote it in the late 80s until we closed the plant in 2005. The IS department never gave us a system that worked in the manner we needed.
 
Serendipity, I thought about the Mac Mini, but I have ZERO stuff for the Mac, so it would be just for Reaper and DaVinci. I don't do enough audio/video stuff to justify a grand for a 16GB M2 Mini. Plus I would still need to update the old Dell within 2 years. And I need to keep the old system running for the Cyberlink projects.

The Lenovo I was looking at is under $500, and I can add 16GB ram for $50, plus pull the 2TB drive from the old computer. The little mini PC I was looking at is $250. I could add a TB SSD for $60 and have two working systems with Win11 and wouldn't need to learn ANOTHER operating system (Linux and Windows is enough.. this old addeled brain isn't as sharp as it used to be).
Makes sense. I'm a bit biased because I can't stand non-Mac OSs lol.
 
I only do a little-sophisticated editing. Most of what I do is either syncing cues to videos someone else created or promotional 'talking head' type interviews.

I use Final Cut Pro. I learned most of what I've done over the years by reading the manual and about three years ago, I signed up for a Coursera class, which was quite good.
 
I recently got Final Cut Pro for my iPad, and it’s becoming very easy for me to use. Much easier and more complete than iMovie. I’ve just used for short guitar demo videos. I also have Logic Pro on my iPad so I’ve been recording the audio through a micro-book 2c MOTU into Logic. Then bouncing that audio into Final Cut along with my phone video. It’s real simple to sync the two sources and I can usually edit a 2 minute guitar demo in about 20 minutes with titles and transitions between still pics of the guitar and the video of me playing it.

Here is an example. It only took about 30 minutes from setting all the gear up, recording it, editing it and then posting the video on our website, YouTube, Instagram, etc.



 
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