I need help

[Sinavus]

Hi everyone I am basicly new to the whole making amv's thing however I have made some small projects in the past nothing worth keeping really. I seem to be stuck using windows movie maker which I have to say isn't as bad as it sounds but its very limited and I need to be able to make my picture fit a larger screen without becoming fuzzy. Also i would like to be able to have more choices with effects and everything, anyways I was hoping someone could tell me of some software that is both effective and user friendly and if anyone knows where to get things for free that would be awesome.

[Otohiko]

From Kionon's sticky at the top of the forum - here's some of your options:

Do I have an editing suite?

In order to edit the footage you have prepared, you will need software to do so. The amount of software choices today at the lower end is quite staggering. For very basic editing, the choices are almost limitless, intuitive, and inexpensive. The number of editors shrinks dramatically as you demand more sophisticated, more powerful, and more professional editing suites. Midrange options such as Magix and Vegas have many proponents in the community, and Adobe Premiere Elements is a very capable suite. For Macintosh, there is Final Cut HD Express. Top options, and undeniably the most popular, are Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro.

Beginners now are lucky. Most every beginner will have access to at least one lower end software title. If you have windows, you most likely have Windows Movie Maker. If you have Mac OS X, you most likely have iMovie. This covers the vast majority of video editors. If you are on BSD, Solaris, or a flavor of linux, this guide is probably not directed at you. Other low end editing solutions will not be covered here for two reasons; they are generally not considered powerful enough and there are far too many options to describe individually.

Mid-Range Options:

Magix Movie Edit Pro might suffice for users on a budget who want a feature-rich video-editing package. But competitors are easier to work with and deliver better results. Pros: Low Price, Plenty of effects. Cons: Applying effects not as intuitive as it should be. So-so titling features. Imperfect chroma-key function.

Adobe Premiere Elements is a solid first-generation program, but there are better all-around solutions available for eager entry-level editors, among them Pinnacle Studio Plus 9. Pros: Excellent titling and chroma key features. Fine stepping-stone for learning Premiere Pro. Good integration with Photoshop Elements. Cons: Interface is challenging at times.

Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 delivers a top-notch blend of features, usability, and performance for most editors. Pros: Easy to use. Broad feature set, particularly for audio and DVD authoring. Strong performance. Cons: Lackluster chroma key quality.

Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11 is an extremely usable editor with enough features for most home productions. Pros: Ease of use, new third-party slide-show tool, effects package and audio noise removal utility, optional theme specific titles, transitions and menus. Cons: Included titles, transitions and menus are old. Only two video timelines. Chromakey and slow-motion tests features are so-so.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio is a functional and stable editing and authoring solution has excellent DVD-authoring features, but its interface could use some work. Pros: High-quality rendering and output; excellent DVD-authoring feature set; some very cool special effects; very stable. Cons: Daunting interface; Somewhat cumbersome HDV workflow; lacks automatic color-correction and backlight-compensation tools.

Final Cut Express HD is a wonderfully competent bargain for most Mac-based producers. Pros: Comprehensive editing environment. HDV editing. Full-key frame support. Cons: No multicam capabilities or WAV editor.

High-End Options:

Adobe Premiere 6.X is a venerable piece of software that still holds its own compared to newer and flashier competitors. Although the interface is dated, it has many loyal proponents in the video editing industry. Pros: Well tested and well known on Windows, Premiere 6.x offers strong support for third party hardware and software. Very strong following in the community. Also available on Mac. “Rubberbands” for transition and overlay use are intuitive and highly effective. Cons: Unsupported and difficult to obtain legally. Not as powerful as its younger siblings, the Pro line, especially in terms of in-house effects and transitions. Even for those who have dabbled in video editing before, the interface can be daunting. Really buggy on Mac, and pretty much has to run in Classic Mode (OS 9). As has been said in earlier versions of this guide, it is pretty much recommended to stay away from it if you are on a Mac.

Adobe Premiere Pro brings Premiere back to the Mac, and it’s now available for both Mac and PC users, as Premiere Pro CS3. This isn’t that old crash-prone and worn-out Mac Premiere many of you have been told to stay away from that only used to run on OS 9, but a completely re-written, supercharged version that might surprise you, regardless of what OS you're on. Pros: Available for Intel Macs and Windows. Fairly easy to understand for those who have dealt with midrange editors or Premiere 6.x/Elements. Pro CS3's best feature by far is the ability to create graphics in Photoshop, place them in Premiere Pro, and then go back and make changes to those graphics in Photoshop with the changes immediately showing up in the Premiere Pro timeline. That’s bound to be useful for anime music video editors, given that Adobe says editors’ most-commonly used program is, ironically, Photoshop. Cons: Steep learning curve. Astronomical price. No support for PPC Macs, with no support planned for a universal binary package now or ever. No DVCPRO HD or AVCHD format support out of the box (but available through third parties), and the Mac version has no support for AIFF audio file import or export.

Apple Final Cut Pro has evolved into a workhorse application that handles everything from basic digital video editing to uncompressed HD video processing and is a powerful, flexible, affordable, and scalable editing program for a wide range of professional and semiprofessional users. Pros: Written by Apple for Apple Macintosh OS X. Extremely capable and powerful. Flexible Open Format Timeline allows mixing of supported frame sizes, frame rates, and codecs in a sequence. FCP automatically handles the conversions in real time. If you learn FCP fast enough and while young enough, you may just be opening a door to your future in the video editing industry. Much of the established industry uses Macs, and FCP is one of two (the other being Avid) mainstream editing choices. Cons: Mac only (obviously), Open Format Timeline isn't perfectly smooth due to less than ideal frame-repeat patterns that make up the difference between 24fps and 30fps video (remember telecining?). Huge, time consuming installation. Steep system requirements, especially for HD capabilities. Astronomical price.

[Kionon]

...Beaten by the Oto. Thank you, sir.