Video editing software selection can appear a little off-putting when you start to see the range of products available. With some help in remaining attentive to what is valuable you can formulate a good choice.
One of the major points to bear in mind is:
“What is it that I am really going to carry out with the video editing software that I decide upon?”
The reply to that question has to stay upmost in your mind when selecting the best video editing software for you.
All of the major home video editing software companies propose camcorder to DVD video editing solutions that make them just about inseparable from each other. So keep your emphasis on what you actually need.
Like any other competitive market, video editing software is caught up in a never ending race to keep up with technology as it develops and still make the product seem “sexy” to the customer. The point is you probably don’t want to buy video editing software. What you want is a finished video production.
Video File Formats
The initial thing to find out is what is the format of the material you will be manipulating and what will be the formats that you will want to generate in the end. Input will be determined by your camcorder or your DVD recorder or whatever the source of your material is. Take note of the format your device records in and make sure that one is covered first.
Then realistically take a look at how you would most likely share out your final videos. DVD? Blu-Ray? Uploading to YouTube or something like it? Be certain the video software you select can produce to the format you want.
So, your first task in deciding on what video editing software is suitable for you is to work out what your most common source video files will be and what your most common video output will be. That represents the core of what you will be using the software for and should be your main focus.
Video Transitions
Transitions are the little inserts that are sandwiched between two clips to make the scene change. If you look at a movie you will notice when the scene changes it sometimes cuts to the next scene with no transition, this is called cut or a straight cut. The scene fades down to black and then more or less immediately the next scene fades up from black. And finally the two scenes sort of melt into each other softly and this one is called a cross fade or dissolve. That’s it, the total range of transitions you customarily see in a professional production!
All video editing software programs pack at least 50 transitions each. Newbies cram in all the transitions they can because the effect looks so cool when they first see them. The actuality is nobody ever wishes to go back to their house again to look at their latest production because their heads are still spiraling from the last one! Disregard transitions as a deciding point, every video editing software program has some and they all have more than you will need.
Video Overlay
An overlay track is the ability to put one video in the background and have another able to be seen on top of it. It is that “picture in picture” effect you have seen on TV and in movies. You can also put subtitles in an overlay track or still photos or a bunch of other things to really get creative. About five are needed for reasonable control but you wouldn’t use more because again, nobody will want to view the craziness you have made!
Audio
There is no video editing software at the home user level that provides really outstanding audio manipulation and features. They are video editing programs not audio editing programs. Some have pretty good control, some don’t, if you are going to demand pro level audio then you need dedicated software for that.
Dolby Stereo and 5:1 Surround are the minimum standard you are looking for here. The program should offer two audio tracks to play with in addition to the sound in the video track. That provides sufficient leeway for adding narration, music or other effects.
Smart Render
Rendering is the term used when the video editing software is assembling the finished file of your newly created video. Up until rendering, in any consumer level video editing software, all the cuts, additions, changes and adjustments you have been making are “virtual.” The original video files are never touched. So rendering puts all that together and produces your final video file in the format you have chosen as the viewing format.
All the compressed video file formats like MPEG2 (for DVDs) or MPEG4 etc always lose quality to at least some degree when they are re-rendered. The degree of loss of quality varies but it is crucial that any video editing software you select has the ability to identify those files it does not need to re-render and simply replicate those sections resulting in the highest quality possible being retained. The software must also present sufficient manual control over the properties of the rendered video file.
Bear in mind, remain with the essentials, don’t get tricked by the bright shiny objects you don’t need and you will make a good selection!
Rob is a long time video and video editing enthusiast. Others have referred to Rob as more of a video tragic than anything else however he chooses to rise above such things.
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