Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Software Suggestions  (Read 6989 times)

pedz

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 85
    • http://www.why-not-photography.com
Software Suggestions
« on: May 20, 2013, 09:56:35 am »

I have a 1D X and I finally tried some video.  Its fun, different.  I'm not sure how much I am going to play with it but my usual tendency is to get fairly deep into things.  I'm already thinking about different lenses, etc for video.

Two question: Lightroom can store them but can't do any editing.  What software would you guys recommend?

The second question is: Picasaweb has a limit on the size of videos.  With Lightroom's compression, the 100Meg limit is hit very quickly.  Do you have any suggestions of sites to share videos?

Thank you in advance,
Perry
Logged

bill t.

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3011
    • http://www.unit16.net
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2013, 01:17:53 pm »

Share your videos on Vimeo.com.

Photoshop CS6 has fairly good video editing capabilities built in.

My favorite is Adobe Premiere on PC's or Macs.  Also in the running is Final Cut Pro on Macs.  Make sure you have 24gb+ ram and a top quality nvidia video card.  Edit...and tons of disc space.  A 4tb disc dedicated to video is a minimum starting place.

Haven't looked at it in quite a while, but on Windows there was or is a very basic video editor that can be downloaded for free, I think it's called Movie Maker or something like that.  Very usable for many types of projects.  Maybe Macs have something similar.  iMovie or something?

Other than that, there as countless numbers of low end editors out there.  Most are toys, many can do the job.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2013, 01:19:58 pm by bill t. »
Logged

fredjeang2

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1376
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2013, 08:27:41 pm »

Some options for free

The best free (it's pro in fact, but like Resolve has a lite free version) is by far this one: http://www.lwks.com/
(but has a learning curve)

also: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

and: http://www.virtualdub.org/
(some great plug-ins)

---------------------------------------------------------

Economical softwares

here: http://www.grassvalley.com/products/edius_neo_3.5
(hassle-free, from a real video brand, serious)

and here: http://www.adobe.com/es/products/premiere-elements.html

and here: http://www.apple.com/es/finalcutpro/
(FCPX is a very interesting option
but very controvertial)

or even a windows movie maker could do the job for beginning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBmfnm1iTg8
and get used of story-telling

PS: in fact, if you are really starting, windows movie maker is the best bet. You know why? Because it's sooo simple
that all you have is you and your story. No fancy electronics, no NASA mission-control interface. No distraction.
If you got something with WMM, you can cut on anything. It's like a 6x6 Lubitel.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2013, 08:44:28 pm by fredjeang2 »
Logged

Jim Pascoe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1131
    • http://www.jimpascoe.co.uk
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2013, 11:16:32 am »

I started shooting video last year and decided quite early on to use Apple Final Cut Pro X.  It is quite excellent.  And despite what Fred alludes to, it being controversial, I think that only applies to legacy users of the previous versions.  If you use a Mac then it really is very good.  I should add that I've not used anything else though!

Jim
« Last Edit: May 24, 2013, 11:18:33 am by Jim Pascoe »
Logged

SZRitter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 384
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2013, 12:43:45 pm »

I've been using Lightworks for a while now. It does some things well, and others, not as well. For some odd reason, the timeline just feels more finicky than the older versions of Premiere or Final Cut I had used in college. It's also a little clumsy with static images and pplying the effects on the tracks and mapping them to the correct tracks.

That said, as you get used to it, and if you do all your edits via mark and park, Lightworks is amazingly powerful. For $60 a year, not too shabby.
Logged

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2013, 01:58:10 pm »

I started shooting video last year and decided quite early on to use Apple Final Cut Pro X.  It is quite excellent.  And despite what Fred alludes to, it being controversial, I think that only applies to legacy users of the previous versions.  If you use a Mac then it really is very good.  I should add that I've not used anything else though!

Jim

If you've never edited before (starting from a clean slate) and don't have a desire to get deep, deep in video editing and story telling, fcpx is perfect.

If you have a history in understand NLE 3 point editing, then fcpX is a failure.

Premier, Vegas, FCPX all will do the job, some better than others, but none are the standard of the world (regardless of which one you like).

The professional world is still over 60% fcp 7, then Avid, then all the rest.

One thing to note I don't believe Avid has turned a profit in 7 years (not exactly sure of that).

FCP 7 does not require any power as it only uses 4 gb of ram and only uses two cores on a computer.  It's slower because of this, but not dreadfully bad.

The Cohen Bros. under the pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes have always edited their own movies, from the moviola to flatbed days and in more modern times fcp7 including their last movie True Grit.

They just moved to Adobe Premier, or at least are trying it.

Regardless of the PR releases, most busy editorial houses and people in "working land", don't usually have the latest and greatest.   They use what has worked for them and are loathe to change.

Long form is usually Avid, short form, usually FCP 7, photographers that want to dabble, FCP X.

IMO

BC

Keep in mind, at the Cohen Bros. level they are only cutting for proxy, not doing effects, not doing coloring.  They edit for the story and lay off the specialty work to the specialists.

It's smart a director is involved in the edit, it's also smart they're not spending months moving sliders hitting color or doing effects.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2013, 02:02:05 pm by bcooter »
Logged

John.Murray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 886
    • Images by Murray
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #6 on: May 24, 2013, 09:17:56 pm »

If you've never edited before (starting from a clean slate) and don't have a desire to get deep, deep in video editing and story telling, fcpx is perfect.

If you have a history in understand NLE 3 point editing, then fcpX is a failure.

I'm not sure using FCPX would make one unable to tell a story .....  it's a tool, right?  We all get the fact you don't happen to like it
3-point edits are very easy in FCPX - here's one way to do it .....
http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/690-the-basics-of-3-point-editing-in-fcpx-from-steve-martin-and-mark-spencer
Logged

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #7 on: May 24, 2013, 10:51:08 pm »

As much as I dislike fcpX, I'd do the same thing if I was Apple.

Why not sell 3 million somethings at $299 that takes very little support, than 40,000 $2,000 items that take a lot of support.

Yes you can edit 3 point in X, I've done two X edits, just to figure it out and don't like it.  It's not the relearn, it's just there are a lot of things I use in fcp7 that X doesn't do or doesn't want to do.

You cannot lay of an edit in X to someone else, because no professional house I know uses it.

I also understand Apple thinks their way is best, but to me it's like driving a car backwards, sitting in the boot, using a mirror.  It works, it's just not intuitive to me.

Then again Apple doesn't have a history for great software, they have a history of great marketing and buying something that someone else started, finishing it out, marketing it and selling it.

FCP was not from Apple, it was macromedia, neither was color, neither was I-tunes   Apple can refine, and obviously sell, but the only software for my business that they designed in house is FCP X and Aperture.  

Neither one I use, but that doesn't mean they are not useful to some people, though I doubt very, very seriously if fcpX will become the professional standard, then again I don't think that was the plan.

Only Apple knows and they don't talk much.

Anyway, my suggestion stands.  If you really want to learn to edit in a standard envrionment then it's FCP7, Avid, Premier then Vegas.  A few other off the wall suites, but pretty much the 4 I mentioned.

If your working from a clean sheet, want to work fast and don't have to play with others, then fcpX would be my suggestion.

IMO

BC

P.S.   Not that Apple needs the money, Tim Cooke probably finds more money in the creases of his sofa than FCP 7 made net, but there are tens of thousands of people that would love for Apple to sell 7 to someone else and let them take it to 64 bit.

« Last Edit: May 24, 2013, 11:15:17 pm by bcooter »
Logged

John.Murray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 886
    • Images by Murray
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #8 on: May 24, 2013, 11:23:30 pm »

It's amazing how fast things move!  

One initial skeptic, John Davidson of Magic Feather has embraced it.  He's come up with some very innovative ways of sharing workflow - http://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/12309/1-setup-fcpx-on-air - note that he *is* laying off edits to others

NBC's George to the Rescue has been entirely done in FCPX

These are both perfect examples of extending creative thinking beyond a chosen "workflow" and embracing new capabilities - the fact that these two very divergent approaches using the same tool, is a testament to the inherent power of the tool itself.....

Your atitude regarding pricing is curious, is *more expensive* better?  Does the fact that Apple charged $29.00 for the latest iteration of their O/S make it inferior to Microsoft's given their pricing?  The sneer about Apple  "buying" technology is pointless and frankly, I'm suprised you stoop to it; *all* technology in this rapidly moving environment is derivative - the only people profitting by attempting to stand still would be the patent trolls and their attorneys.

This reminds me of a similar situation regarding database technology back in the mid 80's to early 90's; Edward Codd's relational database theory (shall we sneer st Oracle or Sybase/MS for adopting this from IBM???) was beginning to take hold.  The flat table crowd, dBase, Btrieve were, frankly left behind - you'll find only a few small business accounting systems using Pervasive today....

FCPX simply ignores older tape based workflows, that most current NLE's are based, or paradigmed on.  Does this make it inferior, or is it simply a different approach?

Finally FCP 7; it's built on 32-bit Quicktime - 4GB adress limitation - dead, put a fork in it....

Sorry for rambling, but some of these issues have been on my mind - in any case, responding to the OP's question, and nice choice of equipment, it's a nice choice of alternatives;

Avid - $1000 - figure $2500-3000 for a decent machine
Premiere - $20/50/month rental, figure the same as above for hardware
FCPX  - $300 - figure $1700-2500 for a decently configured iMac + Thunderbolt storage/display capabilties for future expansion

« Last Edit: May 25, 2013, 01:50:08 am by John.Murray »
Logged

fredjeang2

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1376
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2013, 03:47:05 am »

It's amazing how fast things move!  

One initial skeptic, John Davidson of Magic Feather has embraced it.  He's come up with some very innovative ways of sharing workflow - http://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/12309/1-setup-fcpx-on-air - note that he *is* laying off edits to others

NBC's George to the Rescue has been entirely done in FCPX

These are both perfect examples of extending creative thinking beyond a chosen "workflow" and embracing new capabilities - the fact that these two very divergent approaches using the same tool, is a testament to the inherent power of the tool itself.....

Your atitude regarding pricing is curious, is *more expensive* better?  Does the fact that Apple charged $29.00 for the latest iteration of their O/S make it inferior to Microsoft's given their pricing?  The sneer about Apple  "buying" technology is pointless and frankly, I'm suprised you stoop to it; *all* technology in this rapidly moving environment is derivative - the only people profitting by attempting to stand still would be the patent trolls and their attorneys.

This reminds me of a similar situation regarding database technology back in the mid 80's to early 90's; Edward Codd's relational database theory (shall we sneer st Oracle or Sybase/MS for adopting this from IBM???) was beginning to take hold.  The flat table crowd, dBase, Btrieve were, frankly left behind - you'll find only a few small business accounting systems using Pervasive today....

FCPX simply ignores older tape based workflows, that most current NLE's are based, or paradigmed on.  Does this make it inferior, or is it simply a different approach?

Finally FCP 7; it's built on 32-bit Quicktime - 4GB adress limitation - dead, put a fork in it....

Sorry for rambling, but some of these issues have been on my mind - in any case, responding to the OP's question, and nice choice of equipment, it's a nice choice of alternatives;

Avid - $1000 - figure $2500-3000 for a decent machine
Premiere - $20/50/month rental, figure the same as above for hardware
FCPX  - $300 - figure $1700-2500 for a decently configured iMac + Thunderbolt storage/display capabilties for future expansion



I think there is in general too much emphasis on the cuttin
Itself.
If it was just about cuttin fast and 64 bits implementations
We would be safe. But that's not what makes a system
Being accepted profesionaly within an industry.

Of course, One can make pro works with fcpx, why not?. But it does
Not mean it would be embrassed by people working
In the industry. It's not really about how Clever is the
Implementation and if it's cheaper and easier for newcomers.
In an industry where a bad tripod costs the price of
4 Avids, 200 bucks or 2000 is irrelevant.
People want something that does the job under pressure,
Colaborative workflows, and standarts as much as possible.

This story about ingesting avchd footage and start to cut
May be interesting in some cases but that's not how
The people in film are workin. They rarely cut with the
Source material and they conform in the end. And cuttin
Is just the tip of the iceberg. Thank god it was just that.
Where the hassles really are, it's on everything that
Has nothing to do with telling the story Itself.

Logged

RFPhotography

  • Guest
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #10 on: May 25, 2013, 07:04:11 pm »

BC, why are you so down on Vegas.  It's a pretty robust program and fairly reasonably priced. It does in one application what you need Premier and After Effects to do in the Adobe World.  It does have a learning curve and isn't overly intuitive, but what decent NLE is intuitive?  I've not used Avid but, personally, I find the UI of Vegas much better than Premier/After Effects.  I work in Windows so FCP in any form isn't an option (no, I'm not going to get a dual boot Mac).
Logged

fredjeang2

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1376
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2013, 05:30:44 am »

What you point on Vegas replacing
An A.E, I have reservations. AE is on the same
League as Nuke, diferently implemented and
Each one with its strengh areas. But there is
Currently no super-app, not even smoke, not even DS that
Features the power of AE.  What is more reasonable
To say, is that you can compo in vegas. So as in avid
As you see in my link.
But it's not goin to replace a proper compo app.
What yes it allows, is to not being dependant on
AE or Nuke for most situations, wich is good.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2013, 05:54:28 pm by fredjeang2 »
Logged

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #12 on: May 26, 2013, 07:35:08 am »

i should have communicated better.

I don't know Vegas, here it's good, but don't now anyone that uses it.

The people that do seem to love it.

In regards to FCP X, or X to keep it simple, I think for the OP it's probably good. 

It's easy to learn if your coming from a clean sheet, but don't be expected to land a big edit, need help and find a long list of X editors, because in my experience there are very few.

Now, I think X can or better put, could be the next big thing, if Apple keeps going forward.

I know I won't be going deep into it until more development is done, because I've done that with the original final cut and it's too difficult.

It took Apple a long time to debug and make FCP Studio stable and world class.  It took 10 years for them to dominate the market.

During that time they had some huge bumps in the road, with real time rendering in conjunction with matrox, only to dump that idea the moment it got started, then
offered dual processor support on the early G4's, but never got it working, so left a lot of people hanging.

At the time, all it took to make Final Cut Studio fast, was a hardware rendering card, but Apple was dead set against it, planning for newer CPU's to make the
process faster, but that took a long long time.

Everybody knows Apple is now a consumer/prosumer company.   75% of their net comes from phones.*

Their desktops have been given bottom priority for years and if your going to work professionally, you almost have to work on a desktop and Apple being Apple seems to have no desire to make any desktop 1/2 as powerful as a PC.

Anyway, nobody should get heated about any comment on X,.

I think it's a vast departure from everything we've learned before and I think some of it is brilliant, some is lacking.  Handing off work requires a server based system which means your not easily going to hand off an edit across town
or across the ocean.    Parking footage off the core of the timeline is difficult, relinking footage is strange, even stranger than fcp 7 which has some quirks when it comes to relinking.

The one Window preview/canvas system really makes no sense to me as with changing the names of projects to events, and making a sequence a project.   It's like calling a car a cat, and a carpet a door. 

Three point editing works, but is not as precise, stacking clips and layering timelines is more difficult, the magnetic thing to me is maddening.

Sometimes I think Apple is too smart for their own good and expects us to believe that whatever they do is brilliant.  Most of the time it is, but everyone makes mistakes.

BUT, let me repeat this .if Apple wants to they can make X the standard of the industry.   They have the money, the human resource and can probably do it faster than anyone . . . if they want to.

As I've mentioned, early on I did two edits in X, then went back to 7.    that was a year and a half ago and it's been updated since, but I think they are probably 2 years away from getting it really right.

A team like the Cohen Bros. that have been editing their own features since the flatbed days, went to Final Cut Stuido and never looked back.  They stuck with 7 until now and are trying Premier.

These are two 18 hour a day hard working cats, that have no time for relearn, much less have no desire to make changes unless changes are better, so rather than look at a few early adopters that do reality TV, I think Apple should set down with Joel and Ethan
ask what it takes to get them to stay on board.

I bet they'd learn something.

That''s just my opinion.

BC

*We have a dozen working macs in our studios, 5 pads, all apple phones, so we're not anti Apple . . . far from it.

P.S.   Fred I promised you some RED footage and will deliver.  I just have to find the time and to make sure it's ok for the talent.


Logged

RFPhotography

  • Guest
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2013, 08:58:48 am »

You may he right, Fred.  It may not do all that AE does but it's quite robust.  There's nothing I've wanted to do that I haven't been able to do.  Three-point editing is pretty simple too.  Really as simple as two keyboard clicks (I and O for in and out points on the clip to be inserted) and two mouse clicks, one to set the in point on the timeline and one to insert the new clip segment.  Scrubbing to find the right points too, of course.  I know it's not used much in high profile settings or projects. 

BC, I was just curious why it was further down your list, not criticising.  As a matter of usage level and profile, I understand.
Logged

fredjeang2

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1376
Re: Software Suggestions
« Reply #14 on: May 26, 2013, 11:06:30 am »


P.S.   Fred I promised you some RED footage and will deliver.  I just have to find the time and to make sure it's ok for the talent.


Thanks James. No prob if you can't.

I also didn't made my Avid tuto retouching public because the actress is a bit known and well, it's always preferable.


I'm with you with your valoration on FCPX. If Apple makes it evolves and really wants to please the industry needs, they will do it and it may well become
the same standart older FCP were. They have people and ressources for it. But it also looks that the Apple we know today is a little different.
My main concern with Apple is not that much on the software but on hardwares. The only real threat to FCPX could indeed come from Apple itself and
their computers. It really depends if the company is interested any longuer for a bunch of crazy entertainment industry's people.
They earn much more selling cool phones and tablets.
The big FCP switch may not never comes, but if it does, it will be more likely because of hardwares.





Cheers.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2013, 01:55:54 pm by fredjeang2 »
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up