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Beginners Video EASY Software
Jun 26, 2015 01:01:32   #
Philipschmitten Loc: Texas
 
After becoming an Air Force Photographer in 1972, I have always shot "Stills." Now I am diving into the world of Video. I bought a little Nikon and I am all set EXCEPT for the editing part. I need something at the Picasa Level to put together movies of our upcoming vacation. Any suggestions? When I say EASY,,,,,,I mean SUPER-EASY.

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Jun 26, 2015 11:29:12   #
warrior Loc: Paso Robles CA
 
Adobe premier!

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Jun 26, 2015 14:24:21   #
Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA
 
If you want super easy start with the free movie editing software that comes with Windows. It will allow you to cut and paste scenes and add vocal or music tracks and titles. But as you progress I'd recommend Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition, which is a sound editor that integrates seemlessly into the Premiere timeline. I have used several "easy" video editors and they all were lacking. Premiere has all the features you would want, but I learned to use them as needed from youtube and adobe tutorials, rather than try to learn it all up front. (I use Photoshop the same way.) Examples of what you can do with Premiere: change the lighting and color of a clip, like is done with stills in Photoshop, use real film transitions (fade to white, fade to black, film dissolves), add spotlights to a scene, crop the video frame like cropping a still in Photoshop to zoom in on any part of the frame and/or cut out part of the frame, show two video frames side by side or picture within picture, add titles in any font or color or shading - before, after or within any video frame, add unlimited video and audio tracks, all video and audio tracks are non-destructive (the original footage and audio is unchanged), with Audition integrated - edit the audio in the video timeline, change the volume, mute portions, add echo, fade in and fade out the audio, etc.
Once you get the idea of cutting and pasting video and audio, you can learn enough to create your first video in Premiere in a couple of hours. After that, you can learn different techniques as you need them. Like Photoshop, there's basically nothing you can't do in Premiere.
Bob
warrior wrote:
Adobe premier!

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Jun 26, 2015 16:16:12   #
Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA
 
Forgot to mention another feature of Premiere which is to slow down the video to any speed to create full resolution slow motion, or to speed up video to any speed to create a simulated time lapse photography sequence. Since you can unlink the audio track and edit it, you can keep the same background sounds, cut them down or loop them to make them longer, and slow or speed up dialogue with or without changing pitch.
Bob
warrior wrote:
Adobe premier!

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Jun 27, 2015 06:42:32   #
Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)
 
warrior wrote:
Adobe premier!


You mean Premiere Elements. Premiere is quite complex.

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Jun 27, 2015 06:51:01   #
Capture48 Loc: Arizona
 
Gene51 wrote:
You mean Premiere Elements. Premiere is quite complex.


And "Adobe Premier Pro" is NOT easy, it has a steep learning curve. So I am assuming everyone is talking Premier Elements. What a difference a word makes!

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Jun 27, 2015 07:41:14   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
Bobspez wrote:
If you want super easy start with the free movie editing software that comes with Windows. It will allow you to cut and paste scenes and add vocal or music tracks and titles.
Bob

Yes, the Windows editor works surprisingly well. My son uses Cyberlink PowerDirector, but he also uses the Windows program for certain things.

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Jun 27, 2015 10:05:08   #
bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA
 
Philipschmitten wrote:
After becoming an Air Force Photographer in 1972, I have always shot "Stills." Now I am diving into the world of Video. I bought a little Nikon and I am all set EXCEPT for the editing part. I need something at the Picasa Level to put together movies of our upcoming vacation. Any suggestions? When I say EASY,,,,,,I mean SUPER-EASY.
I was in the Navy in 1972 and used it as an opportunity to buy about everything I found in a PX that had Nikon written on it. A couple years ago my granddaughters wanted to learn to make videos. It was all very confusing.

It finally made sense when I took a Premier Elements course on Lynda.com. It was a very well spent $25. After the cours, it was easy and fun. Everything made sense. There are some abbreviated courses I can point you to that are free.

Since you're a photographer, do you use Lightroom? If so, it will make make videos out of your clips as easy as making a slide show.

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Jun 27, 2015 13:10:47   #
jimmya Loc: Phoenix
 
Philipschmitten wrote:
After becoming an Air Force Photographer in 1972, I have always shot "Stills." Now I am diving into the world of Video. I bought a little Nikon and I am all set EXCEPT for the editing part. I need something at the Picasa Level to put together movies of our upcoming vacation. Any suggestions? When I say EASY,,,,,,I mean SUPER-EASY.


I shoot mostly video and in fact I did a career in broadcast television video production of many kinds.

Now that the world is digital editing, compared to what I did, is much easier.

I have two editors but one is my "go to" and that is
TrakAxPC. It's just excellent at running and editing video.
Editing is easy and simple - after the expected learning curve (short I might add)

They have a free trial available so I suggest you take a look. Best of luck.

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Jun 27, 2015 16:08:27   #
Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA
 
I'm referring to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. It is basically as complex as Photoshop. But you can use 5% of it's capabilities and edit a movie, just like you can use 5% of Photoshop's capabilities and still post process a picture. I've never heard anyone on UHH say Photoshop was too complex. What happens is over time a person learns about another capability and learns to use it if it is useful to them. As I said before, the basics are free with Windows Movie Maker. It all depends on how polished you want your videos to look, and how much you enjoy the editing process.

What I did was just look up the actions I needed (like I do with Photoshop). First I learned how to import a file and put it on the timeline (took about 10 minutes to learn to use the media browser - basically just like finding a file in Explorer). Then I learned how to cut and paste scenes (took about 20 minutes to learn and practice). Then I learned how to fiddle with the exposure and lighting to brighten or darken scenes (took about 45 minutes to look up and find the correct buttons), and how to zoom into the frame (zooming takes about 30 seconds to learn). When I was happy with the scenes order and look, I learned to add film dissolves from scene to scene and do a fade to black at the end (about a fifteen minute learning curve to find and try out different dissolves and fades). From there I learned to use the title maker, pick the font and size and color (about a 10 minute learning curve for anyone used to a word processor). I already was a user of Audition so editing the audio track to get the correct volume, and adding a fade out at the end might be a challenge for someone who never edited audio, but not a huge one. Took another 10 minutes to figure out how to save and render the finished video in HD.

It all depends what you want to create, but to me the above steps were mandatory in the creation of a decent video with decent sound. I've never learned the fancy tricks that Premiere (or Photoshop) can do like adding animation or special effects to videos, using green screens, etc. But even without the fancy stuff I think both products are the ones worth learning and using.
Bob
Capture48 wrote:
And "Adobe Premier Pro" is NOT easy, it has a steep learning curve. So I am assuming everyone is talking Premier Elements. What a difference a word makes!

Reply
Jun 27, 2015 16:36:16   #
jimmya Loc: Phoenix
 
Bobspez wrote:
I'm referring to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. It is basically as complex as Photoshop. But you can use 5% of it's capabilities and edit a movie, just like you can use 5% of Photoshop's capabilities and still post process a picture. I've never heard anyone on UHH say Photoshop was too complex. What happens is over time a person learns about another capability and learns to use it if it is useful to them. As I said before, the basics are free with Windows Movie Maker. It all depends on how polished you want your videos to look, and how much you enjoy the editing process.

What I did was just look up the actions I needed (like I do with Photoshop). First I learned how to import a file and put it on the timeline (took about 10 minutes to learn to use the media browser - basically just like finding a file in Explorer). Then I learned how to cut and paste scenes (took about 20 minutes to learn and practice). Then I learned how to fiddle with the exposure and lighting to brighten or darken scenes (took about 45 minutes to look up and find the correct buttons), and how to zoom into the frame (zooming takes about 30 seconds to learn). When I was happy with the scenes order and look, I learned to add film dissolves from scene to scene and do a fade to black at the end (about a fifteen minute learning curve to find and try out different dissolves and fades). From there I learned to use the title maker, pick the font and size and color (about a 10 minute learning curve for anyone used to a word processor). I already was a user of Audition so editing the audio track to get the correct volume, and adding a fade out at the end might be a challenge for someone who never edited audio, but not a huge one. Took another 10 minutes to figure out how to save and render the finished video in HD.

It all depends what you want to create, but to me the above steps were mandatory in the creation of a decent video with decent sound. I've never learned the fancy tricks that Premiere (or Photoshop) can do like adding animation or special effects to videos, using green screens, etc. But even without the fancy stuff I think both products are the ones worth learning and using.
Bob
I'm referring to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. It is bas... (show quote)


Sounds fairly easy as a learning process. You mention
WMM. The only real problem is that WMM won't accept
MOV files which is what most dslr cameras today record in... at least in my experience.

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Jun 27, 2015 22:37:04   #
Philipschmitten Loc: Texas
 
Thanks for all your help. I have decided to go with Premere Elements 13

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Jun 28, 2015 00:30:10   #
bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA
 
Philipschmitten wrote:
Thanks for all your help. I have decided to go with Premere Elements 13
Good choice. Let me know if I can help.

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Jun 28, 2015 01:33:15   #
Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA
 
Hi Jimmya,
I dowloaded the free 2012 Microsoft Essentials software for Win 7, 8 and 8.1 (I have 8.1) which includes the new Movie Maker.
I tried it out and it does import MOV and MTS (Panasonic) files.
Bob
jimmya wrote:
Sounds fairly easy as a learning process. You mention
WMM. The only real problem is that WMM won't accept
MOV files which is what most dslr cameras today record in... at least in my experience.

Reply
Jun 28, 2015 02:53:38   #
jimmya Loc: Phoenix
 
Bobspez wrote:
Hi Jimmya,
I dowloaded the free 2012 Microsoft Essentials software for Win 7, 8 and 8.1 (I have 8.1) which includes the new Movie Maker.
I tried it out and it does import MOV and MTS (Panasonic) files.
Bob


Good I'm glad it works. By the way I was in AFRTS with the Air Force in the Azores and at Ellsworth - it was a SAC base at the time. I left the AF for a career in commercial television and never looked back.

Nice to meet you and thank you for your service Mr.

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