Best consumer video editing software?

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I am thinking about buying a digital cable tuner from Hauppauge and some video editing software to convert VHS to DVD on my laptop.

I like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1950 because it will plug into my laptop easily and it has inputs for a VCR.

Which software would you recommend?
(The Tuner comes with Ulead DVD Movie Factory.)

Options:
Please vote in the poll.

I like Elements because I can also use it to edit my photos. I don’t know how well it is at editing videos.

When writing your recomendation please include a link to the product with information, include why you like it over other software, and make sure it’s a consumer level product.
Is Cyberlink’s product compatible with Windows 7 64-bit?
And most importantly, does Cyberlink come bundled with another hardware that I may want to buy?

Thanks for you advice.

Peter Z.
—

I am running a Core 2 Duo T7500 w/4GB RAM and Windows 7 64-bit.

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Your list is missing Pinnacle Studio. That is what I used to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD, it works great. The only thing that annoys me is that the app constantly tries to sell you addons, though in the more recent versions you can hide the for-$$$ extras.

I also tried using an earlier version of Adobe Premier Elements – it crashed every time I tried creating a movie longer than about 60 minutes. And it had this annoying habit of making a working copy of every MPEG file that I was editing.

I have a Quad Core system with 8GB RAM running Windows 7 (though I was using 64-bit Vista with only 4GB RAM when I did my VHS to DVD transfers).

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Your list is missing Pinnacle Studio. That is what I used to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD, it works great. The only thing that annoys me is that the app constantly tries to sell you addons, though in the more recent versions you can hide the for-$$$ extras.

I also tried using an earlier version of Adobe Premier Elements – it crashed every time I tried creating a movie longer than about 60 minutes. And it had this annoying habit of making a working copy of every MPEG file that I was editing.

I have a Quad Core system with 8GB RAM running Windows 7 (though I was using 64-bit Vista with only 4GB RAM when I did my VHS to DVD transfers).

Peter I used to love Pinnacle, but back in 2000, or so I found it to be clunky and an absolute resource hog. So bad in fact I ended up removing it. Of course that was on an XP machine with only 1G or ram. Has it gotten better or is it still bloated and slow in its renderings?

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Peter I used to love Pinnacle, but back in 2000, or so I found it to be clunky and an absolute resource hog. So bad in fact I ended up removing it. Of course that was on an XP machine with only 1G or ram. Has it gotten better or is it still bloated and slow in its renderings?

Hi t8ntlikly,

Since purchasing Pinnacle this spring, I have been able to render a 10 minute video clip for viewing on YouTube in about 15-20 minutes.
With the adoption of 64-bit computing, and more RAM in PC’s, the rendering times have become bearable.
I can’t compare render times to earlier versions of the software, since this is the first time I have owned a Pinnacle product.

-Peter
(Peter the thread creater, not Peter Johnson2191)

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Thanks, I may buy that one because the price looks right, only around $100. I thought that software was professional only…!

Which version do you recommend?
Studio, Studio Ultimate, or Studio Ultimate Collection?

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I usually get what Fry’s has on sale. Currently I am running Ultimate Collection because of a deal that Fry’s had. But earlier was was running just Studio – it was fine for transferring VHS tapes, or for creating DVDs from movies recorded from TV.

By the way, I have a Hauppage HVR-1600 video capture card and use the bundled WinTV to record the tapes or shows. I then run the MPG file through Studio, trimming and adding menus to convert to DVD.

And a hint: don’t let Studio burn your DVD – it incorrectly guesses the size of your video, overestimating by as much as 40% (in other words, it thinks that a video that will fit easily on a DVD is too big to fit). I always tell it that I have a dual-layer DVD and have it generate the DVD image to the disk drive. Then I use Nero to burn the DVD. I also set the WinTV recorder to proper level so that the resulting movie fits on a single DVD – this way the DVD retains any Closed Captioning stream that is present.

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Thanks Peter J,

I just purchased Pinnacle HD for $46.99 and a Happauge 950Q HD TV tuner card for $69.99 off Amazon.
I can’t wait to start transcribing VHS and recording HD TV off the air!

-Peter Z.

I usually get what Fry’s has on sale. Currently I am running Ultimate Collection because of a deal that Fry’s had. But earlier was was running just Studio – it was fine for transferring VHS tapes, or for creating DVDs from movies recorded from TV.

By the way, I have a Hauppage HVR-1600 video capture card and use the bundled WinTV to record the tapes or shows. I then run the MPG file through Studio, trimming and adding menus to convert to DVD.

And a hint: don’t let Studio burn your DVD – it incorrectly guesses the size of your video, overestimating by as much as 40% (in other words, it thinks that a video that will fit easily on a DVD is too big to fit). I always tell it that I have a dual-layer DVD and have it generate the DVD image to the disk drive. Then I use Nero to burn the DVD. I also set the WinTV recorder to proper level so that the resulting movie fits on a single DVD – this way the DVD retains any Closed Captioning stream that is present.

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And a hint: don’t let Studio burn your DVD – it incorrectly guesses the size of your video, overestimating by as much as 40% (in other words, it thinks that a video that will fit easily on a DVD is too big to fit). I always tell it that I have a dual-layer DVD and have it generate the DVD image to the disk drive. Then I use Nero to burn the DVD. I also set the WinTV recorder to proper level so that the resulting movie fits on a single DVD – this way the DVD retains any Closed Captioning stream that is present.

Just curious – do you put any videos on DVD longer than 60 minutes … i.e. 90-120 minutes? I’ve been trying to do this with Pinnacle Studio 12 and I have to use automatic quality setting for anything over 60 minutes but I can’t get a good copy beyond 60 minutes. The DVD plays fine in the computer but on a regular DVD player, the picture is pixellated (those little square blocks) and if bad enough also freezes up. I don’t want to have to split a project into two DVD’s and trying to figure out how to get around this as the DVD says on it that it’s “4.7 GB, 120 minutes”.

Rod Corkum

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None of the above. I use Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I’ve previously used some of the others and they are okay for basics. In the past I used Pinnacle Studio and have Roxio installed. However Vegas is more to my editing style and liking on the PC.

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This for your tip. I had never even heard of that one.

What’s the difference between the entry level “HD” version and the “Studio Platium” verson?

Peter

None of the above. I use Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I’ve previously used some of the others and they are okay for basics. In the past I used Pinnacle Studio and have Roxio installed. However Vegas is more to my editing style and liking on the PC.

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And a lone Mac user yells from the back of the room, “iMovie!!”.

**running and ducking**

Edit: I once tried a trial of Adobe Premiere Elements, but it wasn’t nearly easy to use as iMovie. This was about a year ago and I was limited in what I could use because my camera creates only AVCHD files. I haven’t looked around recently to see what’s new on the market.

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Have you looked at Polderbits Video Editor?
I don’t use it but I use their Audio Editor and Recorder and they’re great.
Cheers.
Jack

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I had Roxio Creator 2009 and liked it. They have 2010 out now and I upgraded. I don’t know if it is the best but it meets my needs nicely as a casual editor of videos and DVDs.

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You did not include Video Studio Pro X2 (version X3 is out now) from Corel. I have tried just about every video editor out there and this is by far the best one short of a professional grade program. It allows you to import from nearly every type of source, can read most every major format and some of the lesser known ones, has extensive authoring capabilities (including audio tracks), extensive menuing tools, and lets you build your output in ISO format for later burning with the burning program of your choice. At $99.00 it is a bargain considering what it can do. I’ve used it to convert VHS, camcorder, and ripped DVD files, built hundreds of output files, and burned well over 500 DVDs (I use standard format, but it will also write to Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and YouTube output). First started with ver. 9 and upgraded thru 10, 11, and now X2, and it just keeps getting better.

PS: Forget to mention that it lets you alter the compression rate on the fly, so you can manipulate how much content will fit on either 4.7, or 8.5 GB media. You can easily fit 3 hours plus onto a 4.7 disk and still maintain good video quality.

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I use Adobe Premiere Elements (PrEl) and have been happy with it for the most part. It has a large set of menu templates, transitions, and effects. It also has a learning curve. If you have just a little bit of video to do, you should probably go for something that’s easy to learn. The biggest problem I’ve had with PrEl was a couple of years ago when it would fail to start correctly. The only solution Adobe offered was to create new profiles, which worked for a little while before I’d have to create another profile. Eventually I stumbled upon a simpler solution and all has been fine since, no thanks to Adobe.

I used to do my work on a 6-year old P4 computer with 2GB RAM. It worked, but rendering was slow. I now have a quad-core i7-860 with 8GB RAM and basic render times have dropped from about 2 hours to 20 minutes for 60 minutes of video.

As Peter Johnson2191 suggested, don’t let the editing application burn directly to the DVD burner. Always burn to the hard drive and use some other application (I use ImgBurn) to make the DVD. Working this way means you won’t lose everything if the burn goes bad. It also lets you do the burns (or additional burns) later if you want.

As an aside, you should be able to get current version of PrEl bundled with Photoshop Elements for under $100 if you shop very carefully (e.g., $86 for “buy it now” on EBay today).

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This post is a warning,not a lesson…:
After the hair pulling frustration of trying to get Roxio mydvd 9 to make a long form dvd properly,I jumped at the Western Digital TV Media Player when it hit $100 last January.
Yes,the dvd9 edits well enough for me;but burning was such a pain.Now to share a home video,I need only a cheap flash card,or play from an outboard hard drive.
The WD Media Player is handy for me when visiting oldies whose tech purchases stopped with the Elcasette or some such nonsense.
Oh,and one trick learned from trial and error,when I found the ‘copy’ disc to disc feature from the ‘Record Now’ was mia in the mydvd 9,i shut down all those resource hog dla & system monitors from mydvd 9 and reinstalled only the copy feature from olden days ‘record now’,(also a Roxio item).Old and new Roxio coexist,for now one cannot see the other.

Peter Johnson’s post caught my eye,I am very fond of my Pinnacle Tuner,works well with sat feeds and thru converter to my antenna.
So,I am very interested in finding out what to get for when we make the jump to an html5,Win 7,WMP12+,upwardly compatible., new machine.
Thanks

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Posted 2010-06-27
I’m a struggling novice in home videos. I need help especially editing AVCHD software restricted by this criteria:
all original scenes are taken with a Canon Vixia HF200 camcorder using SDHC Speed Class 6 memory cards.
Selected Recording Setup: mode MXP (1920 x 1080 resolution), Cine Mode, Frame Rate PF24.
Selected Playback Setup: Component Output 1080i, TV Type 16:9 connected to HDTV via 4-way HDMI switchbox.

recordings saved via USB cable to Home Theatre PC 1TB eSATA external hard drive. (Windows7 Home Premium x-64).
If away from home I can offload SDHC cards to a laptop hard drive (Windows7 Home Premium x-64).

ultimate goal is to refine output and burn travel memories on Blu-ray discs. Successful tests to date used DVD DL.
No requirement to send to YouTube or similar online sites.

editing challenges [other than my total inexperience]
Clearly need to delete specific frames, insert audio and text and to shuffle frames, all within a scene.
Ability to shuffle edited scenes and tie them together with transitions into a smooth movie entity.
Difficulty understanding operation of much of the software tried, which varies in price from Free to US$150.
Keeping software costs down. Nobody gives Seniors Discounts on computer stuff!!!

am not prepared to lower my sights so that some of the software will work. We have quite an investment in our Home

Theatre and look for the best return on it. Some software does not work with AVCHD/H.264 (.mts, .m2ts)

Here is what we’ve tried – all work to some extent. Most documentation is pathetic, and useful tutorials by printed

example or video is absent.

Arcsoft TotalMedia Extreme Version 2 (includes TotalMedia Theatre3 Platinum – a very good player)
Corel DVD MovieFactory Version 7
Corel VideoStudio Pro X3
Microsoft Windows Media Version 9
Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker Version 14
Nero 9 (includes a number of useful programs)
Pixela ImageMixer3SE Version 5. [Includes a good Transfer Utility to import videos from camcorder to PC]
Pixela AVCHDPlayer Version 2,1,0,2

Any help to simplify and expedite my toils would be much appreciated. Hopefully someone has blazed the same trail.

Thank you from British Columbia, Canada.

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Your list is missing aneesoft video converter. That is what I used to transfer my videos, it works great.

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Once again, there are 2 excellent programs missing. The first is http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdstylerpe/ There is also an installable version but both work exactly the same and both FREE.
My second is WinAvi8, It can convert a 2 hour film and burn it to a DVD in under 1 hour. There is version 10 http://video-converter.winavi.com/ I tried as trial but gave too many errors.
P.S. if using DVDStyler just create dvd.iso and burn with built-in burner in W7 or burner of choice if not using W7.

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Clearly need to delete specific frames, insert audio and text and to shuffle frames, all within a scene.
Ability to shuffle edited scenes and tie them together with transitions into a smooth movie entity.

Pinnacle Studio tis the best I’ve used (also have and use Roxio and Nero and Videostudio X3 and Premiere Elements 8 and various other converters, but never the Sony product) since about version 11 (12 and now 14 are very good ( 8 and 9 blew)). It still takes a very competent system to import and semi-smoothly scrub a 1920×1080 video but if that works well, Pinnacle has the ability to apply effects to more than one clip at a time (important if its been edited or auto-parsed into hundreds of clips) and most actions are as simple as drag and drop. Others have thier own strengths in given areas but the multi clip editiing capabilities keeps me coming back to Pinnacle.

I don’t ever burn anything to Blu-Ray so wouldn’t be of help there (Though the specs indicate Pinnacle is capable). I output to 1280×720 (or 1920 if I really want to perserve absoulutely every last detail) mpg and then convert everything at 100% quality XVID avi video using AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot), which still shaves about 30% off the size typically and is compatible with just about every media player or media playback device that we have, the exception being an older media player that messes up the indexing if the filesize is over 2 gigs.

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The one I use is Womble Multimedia’s MPEG Video Wizard DVD, I don’t have a video camera as such I do take some videos on my still camera and compile them. My main use is for editing video recorded from TV, Movies and Series. I record them to rewritable DVD in the DVD recorder then edit out the adds and add Menus then burn them to DVD. The beauty with this program is that you don’t have to recompile the video as long as you don’t make major changes. I can edit and burn a movie in about 30 min, everything else I tried had to recompile the whole video and would take hours to do so.

It’s worth a look you get 30 days free trial with no restrictions, I purchased it within the first week.

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