Movie making software suggestions

[Sarath]

I need a good free or paid (>2-4k) Movie making software. I have no idea about the current offerings.

I have close to ~200GB of 1080p/i and 720 p/i video files from my vacation and need a good software to organise, label, title and burn them (or maybe leave them on the PC)

EDIT: Its only for home use. Like I said for my home videos from my vacation. I will not be modifying any aspects of the video or edit it much.
The only things I would do is stitch them together, create titles and then burn them.

I actually have the PMB (Picture Motion Browser) software that comes with all the Video and still cams of Sony. I haven't started on it yet. I don't want to abandon or switch to another software mid way through my work, when I find some feature lacking and hence want to begin with a good software.

I am also unaware of the different formats. Is it MPEG4 for HD videos playable on DVD players? I do not want to go in for lossy compressions.
Might even consider a BD RW drive or get BD disks done in shops if need be.

You can also suggest some professional softwares that I might be able to borrow from my friends. Thanks.

New problem see below *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/software-q/144474-movie-making-software-suggestions.html#post1465909 permalink post #8

 

[vaibhav23]

Sony Vegas

 

[Skud]

pcworld.in have posted reviews of 5/6 video editing/movie making software a couple of days earlier. Have a look.

Apart from Sony Vegas, some other names come to mind - Avid, Pinnacle, Corel/Ulead, Adobe, MAGIX, CyberLink etc. Check their sites too.

 

[Deleted member 26636]

cyberlink power director....simple to use & pretty good..

 

[Anorion]

to organise, label, title and burn them

+1 for cyberlink power director in this regard
the others are professional video editing software, a little lacking in the organise, label and burn department
Nero Multimedia Suite is a very functional alternative

 

[azzu]

+1 for sony vegas Pro if in to serious Movie making (short film stuff , same thing i do )

 

[Sarath]

I have used Ulead. I remember now but that was 10years ago. It took me a great deal of effort to learn all the features (all=all I need)

I will check the demos of the above mentioned softwares.

Many thanks.

 

[Sarath]

I just finished organising all the videos in different folders. Now I face a new problem.

I have 1080p videos from my Handycam
and 720p videos from my phone.

How do I work with them. Will I be able to combine them and form a seamless video?

For example: I shot the first few hours on my handycam in 1080i and then I shifted to p after realising it was interlaced; shooting it in this mode for few hours. Then I have videos from my phones covering the same event in 720p.

Ideally I would like to stitch them all together and make a seamless video of one event from all the sources. But since this is the first time I am attempting this, I am unsure of how to go about it or if at all it is possible in the first place.

ADDED: Output video in 1080p

I am using Power Director 9.

Help

 

[Anorion]

^depends on the output vid, youtube/dvd/default mpg is 480p, you can either scale the higher res vids or use them as zoomed in as they come when you import them into the timeline, make the video dimensions smaller, or crop the area around the vid, you can choose varying levels of zoom, same approach if you want to make 720p vids to start with (donno the particular settings in pd9, but must be there in the file>new / options). crop/zoom the 1080i vids to fit the dimensions of the 720p vid. These will stitch together seamlessly (ie its possible).

 

[Sarath]

Hmm I just realised some videos are in 460p due to some mistaken settings. I need the output to be in 1080p since most of it is in this form from my handycam. I would in no way be scaling it down. So I just want to know if its possible to include the different resolutions in the timeline.

I am not expecting the 460p and 720p to scale up to 1080 but only looking at a seamless playback including all of them.

Will start the work tomorrow. Hopefully things work out well.

 

[sygeek]

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD [$49], a decent bang for the buck.

Hmm I just realised some videos are in 460p due to some mistaken settings. I need the output to be in 1080p since most of it is in this form from my handycam. I would in no way be scaling it down. So I just want to know if its possible to include the different resolutions in the timeline.

I'm not sure about the software you're using, but it works in most of them.

 

[Anorion]

^^then start with a 1080p timeline, there will be a black border around the 720p clips, you can leave it as it is or stretch the video

 

[Zangetsu]

@Sarath: U are already using a good software PD 9...

though there are many in the market
such as Nero Vision Xpress,Sony Vegas,Adobe Premiere & MAGIX Video Pro

 

[Sarath]

Thanks all for suggestions
.

^^then start with a 1080p timeline, there will be a black border around the 720p clips, you can leave it as it is or stretch the video

I think stretching the 720p would be good while leaving the lower resolutions with black borders. [I say this because I couldnt find much difference between 1080p and 720p on my 40" TV with content played on PS3]
What do you say?

 

[Anorion]

^yep even the 40" screens are meant to watch 480p vids (tv quality), so I wouldnt think twice about scaling the 480s to 1080 as well, but this is generally considered bad practice and I dont know what kind of artefacts PD9 will cause. wouldve done it on premiere. You can have two layers, a backround one made darker by 50% to frame the real video, a common trick used in amateur presentations if you dont like the simple black frame. You can use an image or another video as well, as a backround for the 480p vid if its not too distracting.
wouldnt worry about scaling the 720s at all.
PS, cant blv Sony Vegas got the most recos as a professional editing software, premiere is much better

 

[sygeek]

PS, cant blv Sony Vegas got the most recos as a professional editing software, premiere is much better

I highly doubt that, just because you prefer it over premiere doesn't mean that it's everyone's cup of soup

 

[Sarath]

I amount of information I am juggling through in my mind is humongous. Let me summarise my problems and please help me out.

Input Video is shot in AVCHD 1080 50p format PS 24M which is a .mts file @24mbps.

Now I am in a fix over the output video. I would like to preserve the 1080p 50fps form of the original video @ 24mbps but none of the softwares I have come across offer that output or maybe I have missed any. So kindly help me out with the follwing:

1) Which software allows for AVC HD 28 M (PS) output @ 1080 50p or output at similar quality?

2) Which format is the best for making quality videos for the following- DVD, HDD and/ Blu ray. [The stock format goes to my HDD, and blu ray is for future, so answers for only DVDs also will be great help]?

I seem to have shot at a higher quality setting than needed. Ideally would have liked 1080 24p output as in Blu Ray movies but I already have shot at 50p and degrading them would seem a loss.

Softwares currently installed: PowerDirector 9 and Sony Vegas Pro 10. Don't mind getting more.

Dropped my earlier idea to stitch together videos of varying formats.

In short I am trying to extract the best possible final output video from my stock Videos

 

[Anorion]

donno what the 1080 50p is... maybe you are talking abt 1080p at 50 fps... standard for HD is 60 fps, not 50. fps is frames per second. The high fps is more than theater quality digital broadcasts (24-30 fps), so although the format (.mts) itself may support it, the cameras definitely do not give the same quality as say a Red shooting at 1080p and 60 FPS
some digitally generated media content (games) support this kind of frame rate, not video for DVD/HDD
Blue-Ray is a different deal, it has complex encoding options, similar to DVD
as I said earlier DVD/SD broadcast is 480p. Even if you stretch your 480p vids to 720p and make the 1080p vids smaller, you will have found a reasonable balance. This makes a lot of things easier for you as working on higher resolution files is bound to give you stuttering problems during the rendering, (dropped frames, lines visible etc) whether you are using PD9, vegas, fcp or premiere, this is to do with your hardware and not with the software. Its better to work on smaller resolutions.
None of the editing software export in .mts format by default, I doubt if this is playable on standard players as well. Even if it is, im sure the frame rate at least, is not the full 60fps. There may be plugins available for exporting in .mts and there are many .mpg/.avi to .mts converters, mediacoder being a free, open source one. This is a roundabout way to exporting an .mts file, and not recod at all.

 

[Sarath]

Yes I meant to say 1080p at 50fps. There is no option to record at 60fps. Infact when recorded at 1080i 50fps it converts it into 1080p 24fps. I was unaware of this and upped the frame rate to shoot at 50fps.

In that case I will make the DVDs at 1080p 24/25fps playable on DVD or Blu ray player. This leads to my second query:
Q: Can I burn the DVDs using Blu ray format?

I am looking at playback on my PS3 since that is the only DVD/BD player in my house, which needless to say is the same as any other DVD/BD player out there. The PCs I guess are capable of all formats.

Since encoding such huge files is a pain I have decided to have the actual files as they are on a HDD and start work on the DVDs.

Also I intend on grouping the Videocamera 1080p videos in a seperate DVD and the phones 720p ones on a seperate one. Mixing them is proving to be too much of a hassle.

I have no clue about the export format. Also since the original videos will remain unchanged I am no longer looking at an alternative format for them.
However the DVDs are what I am confused about. 10years back I has made high quality CDs in a format I cant remember. I remember recording half hour or less on a full CD. I don't mind a similar low volume but high quality DVD making now.

Thanks for all the help Anorion.

BTW in my understanding PAL is @25fps(/24) and NTSC @30fps. Hence videos shot at 50fps can be converted to PAL easily and 60fps into NTSC. My camera has only two options 50i or 50p. Since North America is the only continent using NTSC it shouldn't bother the rest of us.

Like I said earlier my camera takes 50 interlaced frames and constructs 25 progressive frames out of it. In my understanding that is the Blu ray format's frame rate.

ADDITIONS:

The following types of files can be played under (Video).
Memory Stick Video Format
- MPEG-4 SP (AAC LC)
- H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile （AAC LC）
- MPEG-2 TS（H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC）
MP4 file format
- H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (AAC LC)
MPEG-1 (MPEG Audio Layer 2)
MPEG-2 PS (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3(Dolby Digital), LPCM)
MPEG-2 TS（MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AC3（Dolby Digital）, AAC LC）
MPEG-2 TS（H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC）
AVI
- Motion JPEG (Linear PCM)
- Motion JPEG (μ-Law)
AVCHD （.m2ts / .mts）
DivX
WMV
- VC-1（WMA Standard V2）

Also looks like the AVCHD format (with .mts file extension) can be played outright without the need for encoding by Blu Ray players.

Found more perplexing information about my videos using "MediaInfo" software.

I have 80 files in 1440x1080 25fps or 50i @18mbps AVC format

AND​

The rest 200odd files are in 1920x1080 50fps or 50p @28mbps

AND​

Another 10 files at 1920x1080 25fps or 50i @18mbps

I am using the Sonys PMB bundled software to stitch them together which seems to the easiest right now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just made a few sample videos in PD9 and saw the following:
Power Director:

Stock files: 4 nos; SIZE- 583MB; Duration- 8:30 STOCK FILES FROM ALL 4 SOURCES: videocam and 3 cell phones

FORMAT SIZE RENDERING TIME
MPEG-4 709 5.19
H.264 AVC 919 6.23
MPEG-2 1330 4.06

Conclusion: Adding mobile videos to the Handycam videos increases their file size and hence is not an efficient process

 

[Anorion]

^hmm... those formats are supported on your PS3 rite? mts is a slightly different format, its one of those formats geared for amateurs, and professional video editing softwares have no problem not supporting it as the format is meant for camcorders

If you want to archive/backup/view all the videos in full length just burn the .mts files directly to the DVDs. This means that there will be no quality loss as you wont be converting the videos even once, and the change in resolutions can be dealt with by the player.

Now, if you want to make a video of shorter length with cuts/ titles etc, then the best software to support this would be the one that came bundled with the camera, as this can best handle the incredibly high resolutions. This should hopefully let you export in .mts or even better burn a video disc directly from the timeline. Can this bundled software work on the phone videos as well? For PD9, its still possible to let the software handle the scaling. Just find out the lowest possible resolution you will go to, and scale everything to that res, MPEG4 is the most versatile and generally supported, and offers decent compression as well.

For the DVD burning, I know this is pretty late into the whole thing, but give Nero Multimedia Suite a spin. Nero gives rock solid discs at least, and DVD burning large files takes some time. I wouldnt trust PD9 over Nero for burning for example. The default video editor in Nero is pretty good, and uses a filmstrip view instead of a timeline view for editing, which I guess will be much simpler to use. You can just drag drop multiple resolutions in here, choose a target export resolution, and then burn to disc. Whether or not you use Nero, during the burn, dont burn at the full speed of the DVD writer. Burn at 16x speed.

Yeah if you are having videos of mixed resolutions, but preserving the larger resolutions, then it is inefficient