Which Video Editing Software?

[compuclean]

Alrighty There People.

I've got a 40 minute video that I need to condense to two minutes. It has no audio, and it is going to be done as a kind of time lapse photography thing, but raw video, not images. Now, to give me some kind of idea, I tried using Windows Movie Maker. Ha ha. It just edited great chunks out of it. Basically, I think that I need something that significantly speeds up the frame rate. Any ideas what I should use?

Thanks.

 

[AndyBlack]

I use Adobe Premiere Pro 2. That's a fairly professional peice of software.

 

[CG Effect]

Adobe After Effects 7 is the one to go for. Creative editing software is not cheap you get what you pay for.

 

[Fino]

I used Windows Movie Maker. It works well.

 

[awebapart.com]

I've got a 40 minute video that I need to condense to two minutes. It has no audio, and it is going to be done as a kind of time lapse photography thing, but raw video, not images. Now, to give me some kind of idea, I tried using Windows Movie Maker. Ha ha. It just edited great chunks out of it. Basically, I think that I need something that significantly speeds up the frame rate. Any ideas what I should use?

You cannnot speed up the viewing framerate, not if you are publishing to a standard medium like DVD or mpg. The viewing framerate in most cases is always set around 25-30 fps (frames per second). Fast playback usually involves skipping frames to give the appearance of speeding up. In the Benny Hill chase scenes, which were 'speeded up', we still viewed them on our tellies at standard viewing rates, and the TV signal was still broadcast at standard broadcast rates.

Now to get 40 minutes = 40x60x30 = 72000 frames displayed in a 2 minute video clip, where 2 minutes = 2x60x30 = 3600 frames, you are going to have to reduce the 72000 frames down to 3600 frames, i.e. for every 20 frames you are going to have drop 20 and replace them with just 1 frame, or as you say 'edit great chunks out of it' (which I'm guessing is what Windows Movie Maker is doing).

Different packages will do this reduction differently, and sometimes differently depending on whether you are in quick preview mode or final render. Some will just drop 20 frames and replace with the 20th frame, others will replace the 20 frames with a smoothed frame made up of a combination of the dropped frames. I'm assuming that the high end packages would do really cool things like motion blur.

I use Pinnacle Studio, and even at version 9 (it is now at v11) it introduced a speed special effect which allowed for up to 5 times speed, with smoothing, and Pinnacle Studio is more in the budget range of video packages (we use it for some website video clips). With a 5 times speed feature (that might have improved in v11), you would have to run your video through 2 render processes (5x and 4x) to get up to 20 times speed. But with this type of system you should still expect the jerkiness of a Benny Hill chase scene!

 

[forlow-designs]

As the guys above mentioned...

Never used them though - I use(d) 'Sony Vegas' - brilliant... depending on what package you want - the price varies... the lower packages about: £45... higher end of the scale ones £200 - £600

 

[Treble 2]

Adobe After Effects 7 is the one to go for. Creative editing software is not cheap you get what you pay for.

After Effects is for motion graphics/colour grading etc not editing and you're right it's not cheap neither. Adobe Premier is the editing programme from the CS suite.

 

[SpeedyExpressCouriers]

Agree with the above, After Effects is good and so is Premier Pro but Paul is spot on. Pinnacle would be your best option.