PC Video Editing software recommendation

[Mark Williams]

The real time output via HDspark card (hdmi connection) to an hdtv or monitor is another nice feature of Edius. Although my hdtv is not a high end special purpose editing monitor, I can get close enough for my needs with color bar adjustment. The HDspark card can come packaged with Edius at a decent discount or bought separately. I got mine from dvinfo sponsor videoguys. They gave an extra 5% discount for being a dvinfo member. I think I paid around $800 for Edius and the spark card. This was a good deal IMO due to my experience of paying around $1,300 for Premiere 6.5 and Matrox RT2 output card which regularly crashed. My bad experience with Premiere is what encouraged me not to stay with their products, although I think they finally worked all the bugs out. But once burned I won't go back. I have never had 2nd doubts about my Edius purchase.

[Robert Lee]

Thanks Chris and Noa:

At this point I'll try anything that I can feel comfortable and that I can adapt to quickly. The Lightwork sounds promising in the description I read and worth downloading too.

Days like today wish it was like in college where all I had to do is walk over to a buddy's dorm room and
ask to give a hand to help me figure out this stuff. (Sorry for sounding silly)

[Robert Lee]

Mark I'm not familiar with the Hdspark card, is that something unique to Edius?
Yes one colleague had mentioned he had been burnt by Premire too, which makes
me gun shy to go with them, but at the same time if I have to farm out future editing
projects to other editors, I wonder if going with Edius files pose problem in converting
to a working file to them?

[Chris Barcellos]

Vegas has long been the step child of fhe NLE family. It originally was developed as a sound editing program, and gradually added Video. For years most editors considered it consumerish, yet I have found nothing that I can't do with it. And everything I want to do, there seems to be three or four ways to accomplish it. It really gives a feeling of creative freedom.

Like the other editors, Vegas 12 is now only 64 bit. Almost any plug in you can get for FCP and Premiere is now, or will be available for Vegas in the future. And it is my experience that you can run it on pretty plain machines and get a decent experience,. I run an "off the shelf" Del Core Duo Quad, with 8 gig of memory and have nice results. I also run it on a Dell Vostro Laptop, Core DUO, with 2 gig.

I have edited in Vegas with HDV footage, DSLR footage, and Sony AVCHD on the same time line without issue.

I do notice that those who profess to have problems in Vegas have their machines overloaded with hardware, giving me the impression that Vegas designers did not have power machine users in mind as their prime users, but with 12, there doesn't seem to be as many complaints. Vegas does update regularly as user complaints are addressed.

[Ron Evans]

Edius has a full range of output codecs that most NLE's will work with as well as their own HQX and HQ codecs that now can be used on a MAC. The HQ and HQX files from Edius can be edited on Vegas or Premiere if they are loaded on the PC. Since I have all of them on my PC they appear as available codec of input and output on my NLE's. Edius will also happily use PRores files too as well as mov something that Vegas has had problems with in the past. So going back and forth to a MAC is not such a big problem.

SParkHD is a card that provides the preview monitor image over a HDMI connection to a TV. It is very useful for color grading to a true YUV TV color as opposed to the RGB of a PC monitor. Useful for multicam in that it shows the current chosen main output image where the PC monitor will show all cameras as well as the main output.

As to performance there is no comparison between Edius and the others. My PC is an i7 2600K, 16G RAM, 500G boot, 500G temp , 1T RAID 0 for active files, 3 x 2T for storage,NVidia GTX560. With Edius 6.07 ( that's what I run at the moment) I can edit multicam realtime with 5 tracks of AVCHD native files. Both Vegas 12 and Premiere cannot do this without reducing quality and frame rate considerably. If you are just editing one track then they are just fine too.

Ron Evans

[Mark Williams]

+1 What Ron said.

[Robert Lee]

Thanks. Chris, Ron & Mark.

I do feel a little better after reading your postings.

As crazy as this may sound, another way for me to get a better feel of each software is take footage from an earlier project and put it thorough Edius and Vegas to try out the different features before the trial runs out.

In another posting, I did see someone send a link to clipwrap. It cost $50 but this software would easily convert AVHCD vids to an acceptable format that fc7 can accept. Have you heard of this software, and if you have, does it work?

Robert

[Pete Bauer]

I think you're being prudent to download the trial versions to try before you buy. As Burk Webb pointed out earlier, Premiere is becoming very popular for former FCP users. PPro ain't what it used to be...in a very good way...so I think it is worth trialing it along with the other candidates. I've not used the others so can't compare; I just know that I get my work done quickly and easily using PPro and the other apps in Creative Cloud.

It definitely would fulfill the requirements you laid out at the beginning of this thread. I routinely do live performances with 4-5 Canon XF cameras, a couple of GoPro's, and separate BWF audio. No conversions; all imported straight into PPro, and except for the GoPro's it is just click-click and everything's synched up for multi-cam. It usually takes longer to copy files off all those CF and SD cards than to do my basic edit. Two versions of the event are edited and rendering out to whatever number of formats and resolutions I may desire in as little as an hour after I power on the editing box.

If you go the Creative Cloud route, you get the complete suite of apps at your fingertips for similar or less price than some NLEs alone, sans the additional apps. One may not need every app for every project, but it is great to know that you have just the right tool for a tough problem, like AE or Audition, just a click away.

Anyway, I think for the needs you laid out, PPro -- or really Creative Cloud -- is worth looking at.

[Ron Evans]

Can't give you input on Clipwrap as I am all PC based. As Pete says you should try them all before deciding what you like. But from your original post, if that is you priority list, then Edius is the best choice. If you need lots of interchange on the MAC then Premiere would be the choice. To work as fast as Edius or even get close, Premiere or Vegas need a very powerful PC with an expensive GPU to get the CUDA cores for hardware acceleration. You may be able to buy a complete PC to run Edius for the cost of the fast GPU alone !!!! If multicam is really important for you then there is also no comparison as Edius is far more capable than the others. There is a learning curve as with all new software but once learned Edius is very fast and easy to use. I have all three for different reasons. Edius for video editing, I have Vegas for multitrack audio and because it comes with DVDArchitect for disc authoring. I have CS6 Suite for Photoshop, AE etc etc. If you are on a MAC there is some advantage as Pete mentioned in buying the Cloud for CS6.

Ron Evans

[Paul Wags]

Edius rocks. Done hundreds of projects with lots of sequences. Its fast and does not miss a beat and just edits just about any format with any other format on any timeline piece of cake. Rendering out h.264 files fof the web or makiing dvds super fast.

[Robert Lee]

Just a follow up question with Edius.

Can Edius handle video that either have different frame rate or slightly different codec?

[Paul Wags]

Yep piece of cake.

I am slotting native raw 1440/1080 50i 25mbps HDV with 1920/1080 25p 35mbps GoPro ProTune with Canon DSLR 1920/1080 50mbps 25p H.264 and 1920/1080 25p AVCHD all on a 25p 1920/1080 with colour correction easy as.

Rendering out a 1920/1080 H.264 file from 5 minute mixed format timeline takes like 2 minutes 20 seconds.
EDIUS uses the built in H.264 encoder on Intel's Sandy and Ivy bridge CPU's. :-)

I have over 40 projects from different clients on the go with some having over 40 sequences on the timeline, it just works. Rendered out hundreds and hundreds of video clips from it over the years.