Wondering if any of you tech guys out there have some advice regarding quicktime.
Is that the best software package to easily create videos/audio, and what sort of computer setup would be needed- including camera and audio recording implements of destruction.
Nicholas Weaver
If you have a mac, iMovie is reportedly good for easy consumer level stuff ($100 in the iLife box)
For true pro-level work, Final Cut Studio 2 is reportedly really good, but pricey ($1200).
JWeidner
I can’t speak to the Pro Level stuff, but I’m an animation student and we use QuickTime Pro for our most basic video compiling and compressing. It may have more in-depth tools, but I haven’t found them.
I also tend to use Windows MovieMaker (hey, it was free with XP Pro and I’m a student) – it’s a bit more straightforward in terms of importing video clips, dropping them into a timeline, synching sound up with them, transitions between scenes, etc.
As far as audio, I don’t get TOO involved in that aspect of things, but I do use Audacity to pull audio clips that I animate to, or to do basic audio editing. My impression is that it is capable of quite a bit, and it’s free!
over_educated
Your not planning on donning a cheerleader outfit to rail against the war, are you?
Dreggas
I use windows movie maker myself on XP. It’s free and pretty solid. As for higher level editing not so sure on that. Admittedly music mixing/editting and composing is more my forte.
Davebo
I’ve been using WinProducer for several years now and find it very easy to use.
rachel
Are you interested try Open Source alternatives? There are some cross-platform video editors that are supposed to run in Windows XP and Mac OSX, and the ones I’ve seen are free downloads.
Jim Schimpf
A important question, what is your video going to be used for ? That is classroom use, broadcast, youtube, other…. This determines to a large extent what camera could be used (HD anyone ?) and the power of editing tool needed.
iMovie comes (free) with all Macs and is quite simple to use. I have used is quite a lot convert old film strips + tapes -> DVD’s. For simple stuff (and in my case simple minds) it’s quite good. Final Cut (there is a ~$300 version and a pro version for ~$1000) allows some very powerful editing and is suitable for broadcast work. The latter I think is what people like CNN use for field work.
John Cole
I want to incorporate short video clips and audio files to already existing online courses.
Michael Keyes
I use IMovies all the time to write online articles teaching music and music styles. It is simple to use and almost intuitive as long as you are only going to make short clips and especially if you are going to use them on the net as you can convert them to .mov format.
Basically you just plug your digital camera into the computer and after you figure out the screen (or read the directions once) you can capture and edit whatever you want. I can even put older Hi8 tapes in my digital camera and it converts them which is very nice.
Nicholas Weaver
For “Short video for online coruses” iMovie on a mac then
Billy K
Need a little more info – are you on a Mac or PC? Do you have any intention or could you be swayed to purchase a new system just for video/audio editing?
I can only speak from the Mac side, but as said above, iMovie (the old or new version) should probably cover your needs. I don’t know that a lot of low-to-mid-level video editing software exists for Mac, because iMovie has the consumer market pretty well-covered.
As far as an audio editor (more my specialty), you can use GarageBand (included with iMovie in the iLife suite – free with a new Mac or $79) which will sync with iMovie. I, myself, probably wouldn’t, as that’s not really GarageBand’s forte.
Audacity (for any platform) is a solid, reliable app, but has a noticeable learning curve. Being open-source, some of the features are really well-implemented, while some are baffling. You also really need to know your audio formats to use it properly.
I like Sound Studio 3 from Freeverse. Kinda pricey ($80, when it was $35 for the last version), but really well-done. Caveat: It only does stereo tracks. No multi-track recording/editing.
On the PC side of audio editors, Cool Edit is highly regarded, though I haven’t used it.
Dave
Just to reiterate:
Mac: iMovie.
PC: Windows Movie Maker.
Quicktime Pro ($30) will allow you to do some basic video editing on both platforms.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Don’t use anything by Pinnacle. Buggy pieces of crap.
Andrew
For the love of all that is holy, get a Mac.
Ole
If you’re on a PC, Adobe Premiere Elements is quite good. AVID offers a free version of their AVID DV, which is discontinued as of September 1 – so hurry! Various Open Source thingies are available, but I can’t vouch for them.
As far as a Mac goes, iMovie should do just fine. Final Cut would seem as somewhat overkill.
Camera: Buy a decent HardDisk-corder. You don’t really need High Def equipment, but it’ll be nice to have.
Audio: Get some sort of flash card recorder, and DO NOT go cheap on the mic. Perhaps you won’t need a $1000 Sennheiser, but a decent mic and a cheap recorder is a better solution than the other way around. And do consider the characteristics of the mic. Audacity will get you a long way editing sound on a PC, Garage Band will do just fine on a Mac.
A complete free and Open Source solution is Ubuntu Studio. You might want to try it out, it’ll run alongside Windows just fine … it’ll do anything the other software can do and it comes for free. And it also comes with good karma included :-)
Regards.
Susan Kitchens
On my Family Oral History Using Digital Tools site, I discuss some equipment for recording audio. I’m still building out the Equipment section, but come on by and see if it answers any questions.
Audio editing? Audacity.
Alan
If you go with a Mac, realize you qualify for the Apple educational discount. Also, if you decide the iSight camera built into MacBooks and iMac is not enough, a great camera is the Canon HV20. HDV is beautiful. :)
Tom Levenson
Second most of comments above.
No opinions on Windows.
iMovie is fine, an excellent program, significantly more powerful than machines I cut NOVA films on years ago.
iMovie allows you to export your projects as quicktime files at several different resolution levels, so you can tailor your projects to different end uses (i.e. higher quality if you are going to project from your computer in a lecture, lower res if you are putting stuff up on the web). If there is anything else you need to do to tweak it, quicktime pro is a cheap add on (never needed it as such myself in this environment; I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever used it in connection with a Final Cut project.)
Unless you want significantly more control over audio than you seem to, moving to pro or semi-pro package is unnecessary; Final Cut Pro is a spectacular system with an educational price of about 700 bucks for the whole studio suite — but the learning curve is steep and there is a lot of stuff you just don’t need unless you are making a much more ambitious project than you seem to want.
Re cameras: so far, all the disc based camera reviews I’ve seen seem to suggest that the compression used to get the video onto discs does produce a visible drop in quality compared to tape based cameras. I’m a fan of tape: you have an automatic archive of your raw footage if the drive you use to edit with crashes.