Recommendations for Digital Camcorder software

Discussion in 'Digital camcorders' started by chetwynd, Jan 31, 2004.

  1. chetwynd

    chetwynd Guest

    Hi All, I have just purchased a Sony TRV33 miniDV camcorder and was looking for some recommendations for editing and video creation software. Ideally I want to be able to do basic editing and save to a format which can be played on my DVD player. I have a DVD-R burner and plenty of HDD space. I'm looking to keep valuable (to me) family video footage so don't want an encoding which is going to lose quality or become obscelete.

    Thanks
     
    chetwynd, Jan 31, 2004
    #1
  2. yuedana

    yuedana Regular member

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    i like the pinnacle studio 8. it has all the features you need and can be found fairly cheaply. if you already have a firewire card on your pc, all you need is the cable (4 pin to 6 pin) and the software. I found it at circuit city for $19 with rebates and all. I also have the mgi videowave(now roxio) and that worked for me also.
     
    yuedana, Feb 1, 2004
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  3. malum

    malum Regular member

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    I use Vegas Video and DVD Architect both of which I find excellent, they come as a package but the aren't cheap.
     
    malum, Feb 1, 2004
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  4. chetwynd

    chetwynd Guest

    Hey there, thanks for the recommendations. A friend of mine had suggested Adobe Premier too although he hasn't used it himself. Any experience of this?

    thanks again
     
    chetwynd, Feb 1, 2004
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  5. yuedana

    yuedana Regular member

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    premiere is a good program also. again it is more expensive and in the range of vegas for price. I have used it at work and it works well. Rendering is slow.
     
    yuedana, Feb 2, 2004
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  6. chetwynd

    chetwynd Guest

    thanks again yuedana, done some research and shopping around and I think I'll go for pinnacle studio 9. Not convinced it offers much more than v8 but hey, if I'm gonna buy something may as well get the latest......
     
    chetwynd, Feb 11, 2004
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  7. PFC-Kluge

    PFC-Kluge Member

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    Chetwynd, did the Pinnacle software work well for basic editing and DVD-R burning? I want to convert short (2 - 5 minute) MiniDV avi clips from my camcorder to a DVD-R with a menu showing each of the clips. I made one a couple of months ago when I got my new burner for Christmas. But I went through so many different free trial software packages for creating DVD-R's that I honestly can't remember which software I used. I have been systematically removing the trialware from my system, and I'm afraid that I deleted whatever software app. that I used.
     
    PFC-Kluge, Feb 29, 2004
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  8. chetwynd

    chetwynd Guest

    Hi PFC, haven't played too much with Pinnacle yet (been busy with work, dull eh). However, I did some trials on some sample footage from my camera, some basic editing, and burning to DVD-R. The quality was very good and the package seems pretty intuitive. I read a number of reviews on the software, mostly gave it the thumbs up, so I expect it will serve your needs too.
     
    chetwynd, Mar 16, 2004
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  9. Cramdid

    Cramdid Guest

    Pinnacle? What a piece of ----! I would not buy that if I were you. I had it and it was so bad that I could only do web video on it. I used it to do a longer video and it would do everything ok it seemed. I then tried to play it in my dvd player and it would have a sort of memory of the stuff I edited out with just a frame of it. A quick flash of a frame here and there was not good enough for me. I then went to B and H Photo and found Premiere 6.5 and a firewire card for $199. Glad I did.......Premiere blew Pinnacle away! I cannot believe I wasted my time and money with pinnacle.
     
    Cramdid, Mar 22, 2004
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  10. PFC-Kluge

    PFC-Kluge Member

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    Cramdid,
    Since Pinnacle came with my Burner, I went ahead and tried it out. I was told that the AVI conversion to MPEG2 was lousy, and I have been using TMPenc very successfully for this key routine anyway. So all that I really was looking for was a good AVI file editor that was similar to MS' MovieMaker that comes with XP (I'm using Win2K so MovieMaker wasn't available). Pinnacle has some nice DV Capture features, screen transitions, and Production Text tec...) and was VERY easy to use. I actually liked it much better than MS' Moviemaker for the AVI editing. Once I had the completed AVI, I left the Pinnacle software and never looked back. The next steps were as follows:
    Finished AVI
    AVI -> TMPEnc -> MPEG2 file (DVD-NTSC compliant)
    MPEG2 File -> Nero -> DVD Disk completed

    I have also gone the following route successfully:
    Finished AVI
    AVI -> TMPEnc -> MPEG2 file (DVD-NTSC compliant)
    MPEG2 File -> TMPEnc DVD Author -> VOB files
    VOB files -> Nero -> DVD Disk Completed
     
    PFC-Kluge, Mar 22, 2004
    #10
  11. Cramdid

    Cramdid Guest

    I guess Pinnacle is a good starter program to learn editing but I had so many problems with it and that it was VERY limited that I switched to Premiere. I bought the bundle at bhphotovideo.com for $199 (premiere 6.5 $ firewire card) Now I can upgrade to Pro for only $199 thats a total of $400 that is still less than what you can buy pro for. Plus I want to wait to upgrade until I build my super computer for editing only.
    My flow is Premiere - DVDit (TMPEnc DVD Author depending if I need to make a DVD that is larger than 4.7 gigs) - Nero
     
    Cramdid, Mar 23, 2004
    #11

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