I seem to remember this subject coming up long ago, maybe.  I'm too lazy to look for it and besides software and things may have changed a lot.

Anyone have any thoughts on video editing software.  I have never used it but know others who have used Pinnacle.  Sony Vega and Corel VideoStudio and Pinnacle are all in the same price range with  comparable capabilities. 

I've been using Corel and I'm getting fed up with its quirks. bugs, crashes and pitiful support.  Has anyone used Adobe's product? Is it stable, my main concern?

I've long agoused Pinnacle, and a little Wax (free), Windows Movie Maker (has evolved a lot), and Premiere as part of the CS4 and CS5 Production Premium suite (at work).

AFter Effects too.

There's Adobe Premiere Elements.

The one I like is PD, not Project Dogwaffle mind you, but PD as in Power Director, from Cyberlink. www.thebest3d.com/cyberlink is sort of a fan page of mine.

Pretty much all my videos in the pdhowler channel on youtube are made with Power Director Ultra. TRhe basic version is around $59 I think. Ultra around $99.

If you want to look at some sample videos I created with it try www.youtube.com/pdhowler

Vegas is, I think, also pretty darn good. And there's of courseFCP Fincal Cut Pro (or the non pro) on MacOS. From Apple.

Are you on Windows or Mac?  Wax is Windows only.

What sort of needs do you have in your solution, budget, numbver of layers, 3D layers? etc...

Some friends I know have Pinnacle and Corel VideoStudio Pro.  I have VS Pro only.  They tell me they are similar but Pinnacle doesn't seem to flow as well as Corel.  Problem with Corel is it is very quirky and tech support standard answer to everything is clean re-install and never identifying nor correct the causes for long reported and well documented bugs. (personally I have found that deleting a project folder that still has content when I have finished a project will permanently lock the program and requires a complete install.  This week trying to render a file to 1080p comes out 208X100pix size no matter what the program reports it is doing.  Tech support answer "delete and re-install" start over, thank you.

I am getting more and more involved in prosumer level camera usage, live video switching and post editing in a church setting.  This level of hardware may soon be going up a notch to pro level equipment (but just short of broadcast quality) Because our auditorium has large, state of art theatrical lighting and sound we are constantly allowing other organizations use the facilities. Examples: outside choral groups, local high school productions, documenting outside ministry activities, etc...

Many of these affairs are requesting live video on the screens and post edited DVD's.

It is time to up the level of video to keep pace with the improvements in lights and sound. 

But in the mean time the post editing is the most time consuming.  Rule of thumb- one minute of video requires 1 hour in editing.  Having a crashed project or wanting effects and features a $50-$125 software program can't handle has me looking for a better solution.

This is all in the early exploratory stage. I'm still learning and open to any advice.

I'm on a quad core Windows 64bit machine.  I have a Mac available at church. I would rather work on the Windows unit because of familiarity.

I truly apologize to my Bryce friends here for this off topic inquiry.  I was just hoping someone here might at least be able to point me in right direction.  Of course googling the different products results in claims from all the manufacturers they are the best and only solution one would ever need. But looking that forum threads I find disgruntled users in all the low price products.  Same as we all love Bryce but it will never be Maya. 

I'm sure a lot of Bryce users also do animations and are looking forward to seeing fly-throughs and such put into a video of yours ;-)

I've had pretty good success with Power Director.  How big are your projects?

How much RAM do you have? Since you have a 64-bit OS try to get 8 or more GB.

See also about having a dedicated hard drive that's not a spinning disk but SSD - Solid State Disk - for the large video files, or for the OS, or both. It';s 10x-30x faster overall. A windows system that boots in 2-3 seconds - possible? reality!

Power Director has had some nice speed enhancements lately especially for 64-bit systems. Not sure how much they use the accelerated DirectX paths, but a good graphics card could also at times be a good investment. I've seen for example plugins from Pixelan (AnyFX) based on highend features of DirectX that require a good card or it won't even run. (for example when I was on a older laptop with Intel 945 graphics).

There are lots of easy presets, lots of content in PD. 

Feel free to describe a test render you'd like me to do in PD

I have a 4x2 core i7 (2nd generation) win7 64 Home Premium with some highend Nvidia GTX something (560?) in a laptop (yes, I know, a rather unusual graphics card for a laptop - it's a gamer monster laptop from ASUS). It is made to accept up to 8GB of RAM and I know I will add up to that next year.

-Philip

Pinnacle 10 was excellent, but I don't know about later editions.

I started with Pinnacle 4 or 5 when it came included with my JVC Camcorder way back when :)

I took up the upgrade offer and got the pro versions.

As far as simplicity and flow it is great for beginners, everything is layed out for you from start to finish.

But I wanted a bit more control so I bought Sony Vegas Pro, adding effects and text seems a bit clunky compared to Pinnacle.

Best advice, is to download the demo versions play with them and see what works for you.

I would also recommend Adobe premier but it is not for the faint of heart.

Thanks guys.  I'll look closer at that Power Director.  I read about it earlier and realized I would need some hardware updates to take full advantage of its accelerated rendering.  And, yes, I know Adobe Premier is a big monster, but even knowing that, if it is stable and gets the job done it would be an investment I wouldn't outgrow as swiftly.

Glad to see you're talking about the two I use :-)

Adobe Premiere (with an 'e' at the end, it's a French thing) used to occasionally crash for me while I was on a 32-bit version of Windows, for lack of RAM. Since I switched to 64-bit and upped the RAM to around 16 GB on a system with 2 Xeon 6-core (x2 for hyperthreading, total of 24 logical cores), it's a screamer and has never failed me.

Exactly the same experience with PowerDirector. Used to be a bit troublesome with winXP 32-bit, had to up to 3 GB to at least get bye. Now with the 64 bit win7 and version 9 (not the latest, they're now at PowerDirector 10), and 8 GB RAM on this system, it just keeps going and going... I can't remember a hang or crash or other adverse reaction.

They're both in my select and elite category of "how could I ever have lived without it!?" category. But Premiere (in this cases CS5.5 Production Premium, the bundle) is several Grand. The stuff you need a boos to pay for ;-) ... I do like After Effects from that bundle too, and AE and Premiere go hand in hand together.

It really boils down to tis: There are quite a number of reat products, they are tools. Find a tool you like, and use it to its full potential. 

tks staigermanus.  Sounds like those two are doing what they should.  The issues I'm having with Corel, I don't think comes from lack of hardware and memory.  I could understand a crash because of memory deficiency. 

It is silly things like: must delete all items inside a project folder before deleting the folder. If you don't, the system hangs up on restart the next time. (assuming the program is looking for the folder because it has files still in limbo).

Or for some reason only known to God it started rendering all .wmv files as compressed to 208X160 pixels even if I selected HD 1080i or HD 720p. Probably a registry error pointing to wrong process.

Only fix was to uninstall and reinstall.

It has a couple other quirks I have learned how to correct.  All of these bugs don't seem to ever go away with updates and upgrades.  That is why I'm looking for something better.