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strata · Posted: Tue May 14, 2002 1:21 pm

Hi,
I recently got a digicam that can record .avi movies, and I'm now wondering if anyone knows any good tools for editing such films... just something simple to cut out certain parts to shorten them and such things...

thanks

Catfish · Posted: Tue May 14, 2002 2:04 pm

Well personally I use Premiere & Fusion. Those are overkill for just trimming a file, however...

Try Virtual Dub.

[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Catfish ]

Ian Jones · Posted: Tue May 14, 2002 11:58 pm

You probably have a program that can do it (sort of) already! Did you know that Adobe Imageready can open AVI'S! well its not good for large ones, but you can certainly crop bits out and do some funky shit too. Its not the right tool however, but for some quick fun give it a try.

Catfish: What is Fusion? is it like after FX?

Catfish · Posted: Wed May 15, 2002 2:07 am

Fusion's quite cool, although the version I use (3.0) seems a little buggy - there's a big memory leak in there somewhere.

It's more like Shake than AFX, I guess. It's based on graphical flows - that is, you create nodes representing file loading & saving, or blurs, or time stretching or whatever. These all get hooked up like a flowchart representation of your editing.
It's very nice for compositing and editing visual effects in the movie.

It's not so great for just quickly drag & dropping a few clips to put a movie together - Premiere is far better at that.

strata · Posted: Fri May 17, 2002 8:08 am

sorry, forgot to say thanks for the answers! I'll try out virtual dub (downloading it right now)

ian: yeah I tried that, but I ran into three problems: 1. Imageready is buggy as HELL for me and it took 5 tries just to get it to save without crashing! 2. It can only save stuff as gifs... 3. I chopped off about 70 percent of the file, but as it only saved as gif it actually ended up being as big as the original file! pshaw!

thanks guys!

Ian Jones · Posted: Fri May 17, 2002 8:57 pm

You can export anything as an avi.. its a weird save method though, can't remember where it was.. actually I have my terminology wrong.. its Quicktime *.mov that you can save.. sorry. I'm not sure about avi's but I'm sure you can convert between *.mov and *.avi somehow. Also worth noting is that with Premiere you can export your clip as a filmstrip file *.flm then open it in photoshop as one huge long image! its great for editing FX etc... of course Adobe after effects is better, but I dont have it yet.

Gort · Posted: Sat May 18, 2002 8:16 pm

Probably the single most useful app for editing and exporting video - on a consumer level - is Premier; it does a great job for the money (but still a price to balk at if you're on a tight budget). I wouldn't consider After Effects for editing, because AE is primarily a motion graphics app and not tailored for non-linear editing.

If Premier's cost is too much for you, then look into Ulead's Video Edit (crap-ass UI but functional if you can figure it out) or better yet Roxio's VideoWave 5.

If you get the editing bug and decide you'd like to pursue a career in the industry, then save the big coin for AVID's Xpress DV 3 ($1699)