I know this is beneath most on here, but I can't find an answer in search. Can someone recommend good video editing software that I can use for commercial use? Very basic stuff since this is for a how-to video. I'm shooting in standard def. with a sony so it's in MPEG-2. I bought software online (Cyberlink Power Director) which would be fine for this small project, but commercial use is not allowed according to their user agreement. I gave that to my daughter. I don't have a dual-core processor, but I have a 2 gig processor with plenty of ram and memory. Can anyone recommend a bare-bones product that I can indeed use for commercial use? (under $200 if possible) Thank you to all.

Someone actually read the EULA? Wow! I wouldn't be too concerned about it--how could they tell?

Some people seem to swear by Power Director and more people seem to swear at it.

Pretty much every company makes a trial version and a lot of 'pro' companies make a 'amateur' version. Adobe Premiere Elements and Sony Movie Studio are stripped down versions of the pro software and will likely do everything you need. Never owning them and having no opportunity to read the EULA, I can't say but I can't imagine that they would disallow commerical use.

Everyone has their favorites for a variety of reasons. I've been a Canopus fan since forever but I also own Sony Vegas.

(and, believe it or not, there is a EULA street in Anchorage, AK)

I think by commerical use they might mean running several setup in an edit suite or TV station type use, and as Andy statedhow would anyone know what software you edited your stuff on. Once it's done and in finished form I can't think of anyway to tell what the piece or program was edited on.

Having said that and being a dedicated Vegas user since version 2, I recommend the same thing as Andy. DL the Vegas Movie Studio trial and try it. It is fully functional and should give you a good idea if it's right for you. I think Edius also offers a free trial but I'm not sure if it's fully functional, Adobe the same. So why not try it before you buy it.

Nice to see another soul from our land of 10,000 (frozen solid) lakes, on here.

In my opinion, for under $200, Edius Neo 2 probably has the most to offer, to the most folks. Vegas. AVID and others are all very useful tools as well. Specific needs (and preferences) will define what's actually the best tool(s) for any particular individual and their purpose(s). If you want recommendations that are actually useful, you really need to be quite a bit more specific.

What the heck Sony camera are you using, that's recording standard def footage with MPEG-2 compression? (That's a bit odd.)

The Sony stuff, at around $100, are a LOT of program for the money.

Before Christmas I purchased a boxed copy of the lowest Vegas Movie Studio HD for $30 on sale at a national electronics chain to give as a gift. So there are very good bargains in software available.

If you watch Amazon, you can find private sellers offering NLEs pretty dang cheap occasionally. A couple years ago, I grabbed my first copy of Edius Neo that way for like $50 bucks or so (and it was a new copy somebody got with a hardware bundle but didn't want).

I just dumped Vegas and moved to Edius Neo 2 (with eventual plans of the full Edius 5.x) - other than not having wave form scopes and serious audio levels manipulation, it has been far more stable and has allowed me to get serious editing done without having to find work arounds like I have with Vegas Pro 8 & 9.

Anyone looking at Edius - I highly recommend downloading the fully functional 30 day trial - it knocked my socks off and I bought it within a 2 weeks of using the trial.

There's two things I wish Edius did, that would make it almost ideal (for me). First, I'd like to have access to third party codecs installed on my computer (would also be nice if the encoding options for the built-in encoders were a bit more flexible - dang good for what they let you do, and quite suitable for DVD or Blu-Ray, but the H264 MPEG-4 options don't let you drop the bitrate anywhere near low enough for DIY web video). Second, I'd like to see Lanczos and/or bi-cubic image resizing (preferably both, at the user's option). It really weakens the otherwise great ability to mix footage with different formats onto the same timeline. Crappy quality resizing is a problem with every NLE I've ever tried though. It still amazes me that users will stand for really lousy image resizing from NLEs costing hundreds of dollars! Thank goodness for Virtual Dub. It's just kind of nuts to shoot quality HD, edit creatively and with care, get a fantastic video put together, and then just mess it up all to h*ll with really awful down-scaling for making a DVD! (Why not just smear Vasoline on the TV too!!!)

I'll echo what Cliff mentioned about stability, and add that the stability of Edius (Neo or Pro) is just a huge plus. From a software development quality management standpoint, Edius is top notch. (You can tell it's not a Microsoft product! - Sorry, couldn't resist that one.)

If it's just a how-to video, what about windows movie maker or iMovie or whatever it is on the mac? And, I find it hard to believe that a company would CHARGE you for software, and then say you can't use it for whatever use you need it for... seems wrong to me.

Not sure about this case re "commercial use" but there are a lot of packages that are marketed in full versions and "personal learning" versions that are cheaper but not for commercial use.

What about VideoStudio Pro X2 from Corel? Anyone using/used this software? I don't know but I really find it the easiest software to work and has almost everything that I require to do basic editing and produce DVDs.

Stelios

VideoStudio "Pro" X2 is awfully "lightweight" for general commercial use (although it might be quite adequate for some particular commercial purposes). Unless things have changed quite a bit, it's pretty inflexible and inefficient in significant regards (and crashes easily). For example, rendering and compression can be just slow as hell compared to more professional level products.