Why is video editing still so pathetic?

I guess there just aren't enough people demanding more logical video stuff.  I've learned from school projects that it is basically impossible to do something with a video camera without having at least some trouble.  Finding the right wires to get video off the camera, finding a port on a computer that can take the wire, editing it well, getting it onto a useful format (Never use Windows Movie Maker to put a video on a DVD - it likes to do it in a format that no DVD players can read), etc.  Most people who get video cameras just want to record home movies and plug it into their TV to show to relatives and don't know anything about computers, so the video camera companies can get away with having lousy stuff .

If it's a good editor that is almost intuitive....and is really good, try Corel

Not sure it'll do what you want...not into it myself...but I'd like to think I helped you.

Happy Holidays.

I use dazzle. * Now known as Pinnacle* It came with a box and cable set to hook any and all items to my PC for converting Movies from my older style Micro8 VCR style Video cam as well as it works for Older VCR's etc. Pretty much any thing with a video out, you can record from.

The down side is you have to record in real time, being you have to watch it as it records. But it does burn straight to DVD that is compatible with most DVD players. I do not know if the newer versions record in HD as I bought mine several years ago.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com

Sounds like a good new project for your devs. Brad.

Frogboy, here is a link to a Wiki page discussing the AVCHD format. At the bottom is a list of editing software that supports AVCHD, some of which are known to be both very capable and multi-threaded (like Adobe Premier Pro).

I don't know what your system specs are, but AVCHD editing takes a pretty high-end computer.

This has nothing to do with editing but you may find this of intrest. Have you seen the WDTV from Western Digital?

The cool thing is this supports just about any format so you can just plug your usb drive in and view the video on your TV.

if you have access to mac osx you might try final cut.  

for windows, give tmpgenc xpress 4 a try.  (outputs in hd & blu-ray i believe).  relatively easy to cut and re-encode.

I could be wrong, but isn't Adobe Premiere multithreaded?

AVCHD is an Mpeg 4 based codec though.   AVC is used on Blu-ray which is why it gets itself such a high spot.

Other then that, I feel your pain frogboy.   There is some open-source tools you might be able to use, but since they are open source the UI leaves something to be desired.   You're a programmer though, so I suspect you'll be able to deal with it.

If you say exactly what kind of video editing you want, then maybe I can help find some good software for you.

(don't you have the power to produce such video software that is efficient?)

I honestly can't imagine that frogboy has anything less then a high-end computer.   If nothing else he could just go to his work where they have machines I'd assum designed for video processing (they make their own cutscenes right?)

Does the sucky video editing software including Ulead Video Studio 11.5 Plus?  If so:

http://www.impulsedriven.com/vidstudio

I'm not a fan of Sony, but they purchased some video editing software and now sell it as Vegas Movie Studio.  It's mostly intuitive, powerful, reasonably priced, and works well.  I'm not sure if it's multi-threaded, though.

Well, I've used Movie Maker and the latest iteration of Roxio's Creator. While Creator 2009 is a lot less buggy than previous versions I've used (specifically, 8), all of the apps that I've ever used for editing haven't been the most stable apps I've ever run. The old Roxio crashed on me all the time, especially when trying to use the MyDVD module to create a DVD with menus, music, et cetera. I've only had one or two annoying and inexplicable crashes with the latest version. I have no experience with any of the Adobe products and because I just tinker with videos shot on a digital camera, buying an Adobe package specifically to edit video isn't in my budget.

I suspect part of this is the proliferation of formats, many of which are proprietary and don't play well with much of the available software. Anecdotally at least it seems as though many people have issues with Apple's QuickTime format, especially on PCs; oddly enough, that's the only format my Kodak camera records video in, so I have to use Roxio to convert any of those videos to something else--there really is no free software that does this, except for some dubious and buggy items you can find on download.com.

I don't think (if I recall correctly) that Vista's built-in apps can even handle .mov and similar formats. So maybe Gnats3 is right--maybe it comes down to too narrow a consumer base for people to produce really good software that works well for a variety of users.

For what it's worth, Roxio's website says that Creator 2009 can burn AVCHD to HD DVD (and I guess Blu-Ray discs too, if you buy the extra plug-in). Honestly, I think it's a bit ridiculous that they charge an extra $30 to burn to the format that "won the war," while you get HD-DVD out of the box!

Wouldn't it be nice just to plugin the camera in, and be able to import the movie without any hassles? 

Now that just takes all the fun out of it!

oh sure * easy* died off with VHS recorders.* "pop it in the VCR and boom instant movie" Now if it's not as difficult as possible.. it cant be high quality. ROFL...

I'd argue that editing is a lot easier nowadays than analog with VHS or Betamax.

im not sure about the newer types of Editing but import only takes as long as it takes to watch the movie. sounds like the newer stuff you have to do more..

I sent you a pm on the sins forum *doesn't know how this whole intermingling with stardock sites works*

who?

yeah, but what is the sacrifice.  Its one of those things, in on end of the field we could have a nice set of standards for video encoding, but in the other we have the fact that almost every standard for video encoding sucks, and good video codecs don't become standard until they are pretty much outdated.     So do we use crappy old codecs or try to keep up with the hardware.   *pulls at hair*

And lets not forget stupid video encoding algorithms.  "I can make this video encoder more efficient if I do it this way" says one programmer.  "But we have to use multiples of 4 for the screen dimensions.  Thats easy right?"   but, then joe so-mey wants his video to be 9 by 3 for some reason, but it doesn't fit the math of the compression software.  "Better make a new standard!" says joe.

From reading the post, and between my personal experience rendering both 3d sequences in HD size images, like 400 images at 2100 by 1090 by example, or my favorite, 1680 by 1080, no matter what computer you have, it tends to take up allot of resources.


HD editing, if you're rendering out of an HD camera, the sizes, especially in an MPEG can be huge, thank God you don't save to avi.


I have used Vegas pro since 6.0, and for about 3 years so far, it's helped me create levels of work in HD both wide screen/res videos and in animated render sequences that make me happy.


Everything runs smoothly on my machine though, I have a pretty decently powerful machine that cost less than the Macintosh/Apple equivalent...


Personally you may find it harder to edit in certain programs like Movie Maker... or Adobe after effects, which is why when dealing with HD.... I don't recommend them.

Not only do most HD editing programs work better than standard ones, but they export to formats such as WMV compressing and retaining quality, so a WMV may retain 97% of the original quality, and compress it to a 40/50 meg video from a 800 meg video depending on the final render resolution.

As about the plug in aspect, programs like Vegas allow you to plug in a camera and render right off of the camera. So theres no importing, and you will have had a much more stronger aspect to editing when working off of a camera.