Which video editing program will do this - advice needed.
 

Our needs are not as complicated as the other people posting, perhaps some of you can be of help?

We want to.........

- Import video from a firewire card (minidv) and also a super VHS machine

- we want to save it as high quality .avi

- we then want to add a url to the saved .avi

- we then want to save the edited .avi as either mpeg or .wmv in 2 mintue clips, or 5 minute clips...we should be able to choose the length.

That is the clincher. I want a program that will do it all, although what we are doing isn't much. But having it auto batch our .mpg and .wmv into small clips is most important. Simplicity is very important too. We have shoeboxes full of mini-dv's we have to edit and this could take time with a bulky program.

Help me guys and girls! And thanks! :drinkup

Adobe Premiere and After effects

If I have a 60 minute .avi, will Adobe chop it up into smaller clips for me? Will it save as .mpeg and/or .wmv?

We have it, but my chickie does all the video editing and it was way too much of a program for what she is doing. I mean, the program that came with our firewire card did more than enough. But it won't split the video into smaller clips.

Anything else?

I don't think there is a program that will do all of that and batch.
The capture from DV or VHS is in the card you buy. MY Canopus will cap from Fire wire, RGB and S-Video The software that come with the DVstorm will let you cut up the video in what ever size you want. you could automate the cutting by using the batch capture and setting it to cap 2 minute clips. then set up a batch for 5 minute clips.
You could turn them all into Mpeg and use a Mpeg cutter batch to cut them into 2 and 5 minute clips but them you could get cuts in the middle of scenes that you don't want cut up.
Cleaner will batch process the clips, add a watermark (though I can't get that to work yet..), and add actions to frames. (URLs, call new movie)

Bottom line is this, Video editing takes a long time. no mater what, even with batch processes.

premiere comes bundled with cleaner ez which does export to mpg and wmv, but as far as i know you will have to manually chop your stuff into 2 minute segments. unless their is something that will take the exported mpg/wmv and chop it. premiere looks a bit challenging at first, but if you putz around with it enough, you will find its not so intimidating.

i think if you capture, then export using cleaner ez, you might be able to set the output files to be a certain length (thereby handling your encoding and cutting all at once)

sorry for all the "i think" answers, but i have some batches running right now and cant test it right now. i will try to later.

you should be able to find the cleaner ez plugin by clicking on "file - export timeline - choices here" ... make sure your timeline (the yellow line above the video and audio tracks) is on the whole hour if you want to export the whole thing...

Thanks for the advice! This is gonna suck, I know it. My girlfriend is using a Ulead program she has mastered, and says she can encode the raw video into 2 minute clips (or whatever length she wants) in digital .avi and then have a batch of .avi's to encode into .mpg, or .wmv

I don't think there is a problem using adobe, but for our needs it may be too much. Then again, maybe what we want to do isn't as simple as I think.

premier is overkill. use something more simple for these simple tasks.

Vegas video + Cleaner 5.

All you will need!

Thanks, mate! :thumbsup

try moviemaker from microsft, its free and does a great job plus its very fast in decoding

here is the link for the download

Thanks! I read about this program. I know it will capture in .avi. Once that is done...

will it output in mpeg? in .wmv?
Can I overlay a URL on the video?
most important..

will moviemaker chop a large video into smaller ones on the fly?

:)

Damn, that windows movie maker is for XP.

we are running w2k boxes...

Ganja is right, Vegas Video and Cleaner is the best 1-2 combination on the web. Vegas ismuch easier than Premiere and faster when it comes to rendering. I learned video editing with Premiere and I switched to Vegas last year.

Cleaner should be able to batch output in smaller clips, I just don't know how to do it. If anyone does please post the info here!

Well, I am going to download Vegas Video and give it a shot. I will also download Cleaner and figure that one out, too. If I figure out how to spit mpegs etc. I will post it here.

May I suggest Vegas Video by Sonic Foundry.
It will do everything you described.

Thanks Wendy! I am going to Kazaa to buy it right now!

:stoned

:1orglaugh

I think they have a special sale on it!

While you're at Kazaa..see if they have a sale on Studio 7 by Pinnacle.

Yes..it makes, avi, mpeg, wmv AND rm vids as well as do editing etc etc. Especially made for DIGITAL machines.