I've now gone back to videography after a few years of only doing still photography. The old Sony DV camcorder that's just been sitting on a shelf lately has now been replaced with a Canon HF G10. The purchase was largely based on info I gathered here on AVS forum. This is a great source of expertise, and I am truly grateful to all the people who contribute here. I also hope to be able to contribute as my experience grows.
Now to the main reason why I'm writing this post: I need advice for selecting the right video editing software for my needs. I have started to try out the various products that are available for trial, and I am annoyed that most of them seem to be missing one feature that is crucial to me. I need to see the audio waveform when I'm trimming my video clips. It is so difficult to set the in and out points correctly with regards to the cameraman's and the subjects' speak when not seeing the audio waveform. The only software I have found so far that lets me do this is Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and I am not too thrilled about it's old-fashioned user interface.
I like to keep my videos very minimalistic, so I don't need hundreds of transitions or fancy instant movie stuff. Basically, the only things I want to do is trim my clips, add background music and simple titles, fix exposure and white balance if it's really off, and maybe do the occasional J or L-cut.
Output features are fairly important, since I want to render in AVCHD and MP4 formats at different resolutions and bitrates, maybe upload to vimeo, and probably make some DVDs for people who don't have blu-ray players or HTPCs. Since I also intend to take care of some old videos from my DV era (my kids were so cute when they were really small), I also need solid DV capture functionality. I know Microsoft's Windows live photo gallery can capture DV, but it wasn't completely solid on one of my tapes (I probably hadn't "formatted" that tape with a continuous time code prior to shooting).
I'm sorry for rambling and making this such a long post. Thank you for reading, and helping me out with this.
Now to the main reason why I'm writing this post: I need advice for selecting the right video editing software for my needs. I have started to try out the various products that are available for trial, and I am annoyed that most of them seem to be missing one feature that is crucial to me. I need to see the audio waveform when I'm trimming my video clips. It is so difficult to set the in and out points correctly with regards to the cameraman's and the subjects' speak when not seeing the audio waveform. The only software I have found so far that lets me do this is Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and I am not too thrilled about it's old-fashioned user interface.
I like to keep my videos very minimalistic, so I don't need hundreds of transitions or fancy instant movie stuff. Basically, the only things I want to do is trim my clips, add background music and simple titles, fix exposure and white balance if it's really off, and maybe do the occasional J or L-cut.
Output features are fairly important, since I want to render in AVCHD and MP4 formats at different resolutions and bitrates, maybe upload to vimeo, and probably make some DVDs for people who don't have blu-ray players or HTPCs. Since I also intend to take care of some old videos from my DV era (my kids were so cute when they were really small), I also need solid DV capture functionality. I know Microsoft's Windows live photo gallery can capture DV, but it wasn't completely solid on one of my tapes (I probably hadn't "formatted" that tape with a continuous time code prior to shooting).
I'm sorry for rambling and making this such a long post. Thank you for reading, and helping me out with this.
