Video editing (Windows)

[Beagle 2]

I usually use Final Cut Pro for editing, and it's great - easy as hell to pick up and get decent results. But my mac's in another country at the moment. Can anybody recommend a decent PC alternative? Cheap, preferably free, or possible to obtain free in theory if you were a thief which obviously I'm not.

I've seen a video where a guy sets up Blender to be as near to FCP as dammit, but it looks fiddly as hell and I'm not sure if anybody really uses it for that or it's just somebody showing off that you could in theory. I'd love to be able to afford Adobe, but I can't. Also, I'm on a less-than advanced laptop.

I'm wanting to cut some humourous videos about video games which is a brilliant and unique idea I have come up with. Doesn't have to be advanced, but some transitions, effects and an easy-to-operate timeline set up would be great.

Cheers.

[Guy]

Doesn't have to be advanced, but some transitions, effects and an easy-to-operate timeline set up would be great.

I have used Videopad in the past, which does what you've described.

Note that there are a few flavours of download - the one you'll be interested in is the "free for non-commercial use" version, which is the one on this page.

[Hangthebuggers]

I've been dabbling with Hitfilm 4 express.

http://hitfilm.com/

Easy and intuitive with plenty of guides online. Quite flexible too and allows for compositive shot editing.

[Beagle 2]

Excellent, cheers chaps. I'm going to give both a try and see how I get on. Karma due when I have some!

[Noodle Lizard]

Sony Vegas would set you back a few hundred, but it's probably the best editing software outside of the Big 3 (Avid, Premiere and FCP).

DaVinci Resolve Lite is free, and despite being primarily geared towards colour correction, its in-built NLE is actually surprisingly robust - taking the good things about track-based softwares and the "magnetic timeline" of FCPX and combining them to make something which'll probably catch on more in years to come.  As far as I can tell, there's very little it can't do that FCPX can - even keyframing and stuff.  I'd go for that, if I were you.[nb]NOTE: Not sure if the free version still includes the editing timeline, it's been a while since I got it[/nb]

[Robot DeNiro]

Sony Vegas is easy enough to obtain free in theory if you were a thief which obviously you're not.  I don't really know how to do anything complicated with it, but I find it easy to use.  Feel free to PM me if you use it and get stuck, I'll help if I can.

[Dex Sawash]

How about something to use mainly for cropping out a lot of dull[nb]99.9% of action cam footage must be really dull[/nb] action  cam footage, just splicing together bits where I fell over? Maybe do a sped up version too.

[Van Dammage]

How about something to use mainly for cropping out a lot of dull[nb]99.9% of action cam footage must be really dull[/nb] action  cam footage, just splicing together bits where I fell over? Maybe do a sped up version too.

Windows Movie Maker could do that.

[Rolf Lundgren]

I find Windows Movie Maker to be okay but only for the most basic videos. The latest version of it is a huge step back from how it was previously with less effects/animations, loss of timeline view and the addition of some shocking so-called cinematic effects which are perfect if you're shooting a corporate video from the 80s. It's a shame because the last one was fairly decent for a free tool on Windows.

[Benevolent Despot]

I've been uploading various edited clips of things to Youtube for about 10 years. Most of that was via Windows Movie Maker (the Windows XP/Vista version) up until a few years ago. It was awkward to use but I got it to do most basic things that I wanted. I then went through a phase of downloading a different free editor for basically every video I made, since none of them did everything I wanted. I've also used the newer Windows Movie Maker.

However the main reason I stopped using WMM was the quality of the encodes. There's no way to force a good-quality encode, and I wanted as-good-quality-as-possible for Youtube, since Youtube re-encodes the videos as well, on top of your encode. Everything I tried came out with the colour range compressed and the image blockier and blurrier, no matter the file type or bitrate. Of late I've been using Videopad, as previously mentioned, and I can get the encode looking as good as the source, no problems. It's also fairly similar in function and use to WMM.

[Noodle Lizard]

Is there a way to export uncompressed from WMM?  If so, you could do that and then encode elsewhere using Handbrake or Streamclip or what have you.

The XP version of WMM was the first thing I edited on and is remarkably effective for what is basically just bundled software.  They completely arsed it up with the Vista versions onwards, though, which were nigh on unusable.

[Van Dammage]

I'm a thieving bastard so if anyone could point me in the right direction to some free Sony Vegas I'd appreciate it.