Help With Choosing Editing Software ...

[Cdn Friends of Pooh]

I am looking to buy a simple and reasonably priced editing software package that will allow me to make both slideshows and videos (and combine both videos and stills if possible).

Can anyone give me any recommendations??

Thanks.

Bonny

 

[alan]

If you've got Windows you already have Windows Movie Maker, that allows you to edit movies, combine them with stills and output them as movies that you can play on your PC. I believe that you can buy a plug-in for around US$20 to let you make a DVD of the result.

If you're on XP, there's also Photo Story (search for it on Microsoft.com) that will let you make a movie by panning over your stills.

Here's a PhotoStory movie that I made of my Magic Kingdom trip in '06:

http://www.stagepics.co.uk/temp/MagicKingdom800.wmv

Last time I checked, PhotoStory wasn't officially available for Vista, but I downloaded and ran it and it seemed okay... Apparently there's similar functionality in Windows Movie Maker, but I've not tried it out

regards,
/alan

 

[Cdn Friends of Pooh]

Thanks Alan ... I've used both those and they really don't do what I want them to.

Anyone else use any other software??

 

[Cdn Friends of Pooh]

Has anyone used either Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Movie Studio or Cyberlink PowerDirector???

 

[alan]

Oh well, worth a try with the Photo Story stuff.

I found that Photo Story did the easy stuff well. But it was missing things (sorry I got the level wrong; I wasn't sure how advanced you were looking for from the original post).

So my next attempt was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Again, this was only from stills, but I wanted to have greater control of the action and how it synchronised to the music.

I found Vegas Movie Studio good, but much harder work than Photo Story. I also didn't find a good non-interlaced output, but that may just be that I didn't try hard enough.

So ave a look at this and see what you think - it was from the Puy du Fou in France. It tells the story of a peaceful French village that gets attacked by Vikings on a day when locals are getting married. Just as all seems lost, there appeared to be some intervention from a local churchman, and the bad guys turned and ran away (I think I missed some of the subtleties).

I liked Movie Studio because it was a proper Windows-style user interface. All the other ones that I tried seemed to be some kind of hybrid, Mac-inspired bodge that didn't really feel natural on a PC.

regards,
/alan

Link: http://www.stagepics.co.uk/temp/pdf3.wmv

 

[CCIntrigue]

What about Adobe Premiere Elements? I've used it for a couple of years with good results.

 

[LaurieG]

In the past I have used Roxio and also Pro Show Gold. I have been happy with both