Editing Software
Software falls into 3 categories: consumer, prosumer and pro. For simple editing, you will only need consumer software.
Consumer software is off the shelf, easy to install, easy to use. The more popular programs are Pinnacle Studio, Roxio Video Wave, Ulead Video Studio or Final Cut Express (Mac only). The price range is around $40-$299. Final Cut Express for Mac is the most expensive at $299.
Software price is features based. The more features the more expensive the software. Some of these features include, multiple video and audio editing tracks, CD to MP3 conversion, one click rendering and burning, more transitions, more effects, etc.
More expensive software DOES NOT reduce rendering time.
Prosumer software has more features but has a higher learning curve. For example, you can't do chroma-keying with most consumer software. Chroma-keying is where you can make everything black and white except for one color, like a red rose. The 4 popular prosumer software programs are Adobe Premier, Ulead Media Studio, Sony Vegas Studio and Final Cut Pro (Mac only). These are $400-800.
Pro software does everything and more than prosumer software does. Also, the pro software works in conjunction with special hardware to make the process faster.
Choosing an editing program
Your software package should have or do these 5 things:
- Should automatically detect and recognize that your camera is plugged into the computer. That way you only have to press one button and it will play your camera and start capturing the footage.
- Should have at least 2 video layers and 2 audio layers, though not essential. The 2 video layers is what's needed to overlap the end of one piece of footage and the beginning of the next one (dissolve). One audio layer is for video sound. The 2nd audio layer is for the music track. The lower end software may only have 1 video and 1 audio track.
- Basic transitions and effects. Home video requires only the basic transitions like fades and dissolves that allow you to fade one the end of one piece of footage to the next piece of footage.
- Lets you render to playable DVD format. This is standard. Most consumer software will let you render to DVD format or a format that's playable on the web.
- Burn to DVD. Most consumer software has a built in burn to DVD program so you won't need to buy a separate program to burn to DVD.