Good Video Editor

Good Video Editor: a reader asks…

I have a fairly powerful Windows desktop PC with an Intel i7 processor, 16gb of RAM, a dedicated graphics card and 2 monitors. I’ve been using Windows Movie Maker but would like to step up to something more powerful, yet not too difficult to learn. Can you recommend a video editing program?

There are a lot of good video editing programs out there, some are approaching the power of professional-grade programs such as Avid Media Composer, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere Pro. I’ll tell you one that I’ve been using for years is Pinnacle Studio. Their Ultimate package is only $129 (and there are coupons to let you buy it for only $90). Fyi, these types of programs have a descriptive name of Non-Linear Editor (NLE), which means that you don’t have to edit while the video is playing like you normally would on a handycam. You get a depiction of a timeline, and can pop clips in, move them around, cut or shorten them, and do just about anything you can think of to create a finished video project. You can work on the ending and finish that, even before you start working on the beginning or middle (that’s what’s meant by “non-linear”).

That said, there are other excellent products out there from Cyberlink, Sony and others, and they’ve all gotten to the point that the differences aren’t (in my opinion) significant. So you can’t go wrong if you want to choose an alternative such as:

1. Cyberlink PowerDirector 15 ($100-270)
2. Corel Video Studio Pro X9 ($68-85)
3. MAGIX Movie Edit Pro ($70-130)
4. Sony Vegas Movie Studio ($50-140)

So my disclaimer: I haven’t tried all of these nor done a comparison review for any of the current NLEs on the market. A few years back I did an in-depth comparison between Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro and Pinnacle Studio. I found there to be a significant learning curve for the professional-grade products. The more recent versions of Pinnacle Studio have started to creep up there in terms of learning curve, but that’s primarily due to adding the editing power of the professional-grade programs. I will say that I found Pinnacle Studio fairly easy to learn, and they have great tutorials (on Youtube!) to help you learn the basics and go beyond into intermediate and advanced video editing. I did try earlier versions of Cyberlink, Corel and Sony video editors, but have no direct experience with the current versions.

I think you have to decide how deeply you want to dive into video editing. With Pinnacle Studio, basic features like placing clips, adjusting length, adding transitions and titles, adding background music and creating DVD menuing are really easy to pick up. With the latest version, Pinnacle Studio even makes multi-camera work easy if that’s your desire.

Looking at the desktop view of the program can be confusing to someone who’s not seen a powerful, NLE in operation before, but the tutorials can guide you through the process for each section, identifying, describing and explaining how to use each element of the NLE. And most NLEs now have pretty much the same basic elements

1. a Bin for listing all your clips, transitions, audio, and other elements that go into your project
2. A Source Window to see/hear a selected element in the Bin
3. A Timeline (with multiple levels) that shows you your placement of elements from the Bin
4. A Playback Window to see/hear the timeline

Finally, no matter which NLE you choose to buy, you should plan on investing at least a few hours of learning time before your first project. I found that using a tablet to watch the tutorial while using my desktop to follow along and try out whatever the tutorial was teaching worked best. Takes a little longer as you’re always pausing the tutorial playback while you try out a technique, but results in much more retention at least in my case!