Anybody know of a good free or cheap video editing software? Figure I should ask before I drop money on something that sucks again.

 

Off-topic, but similar software recc's for photo-editing would be appreciated.

 

Adobe products now have monthly plan options for their Creative Cloud versions, if you don't want to drop a big payment on anything. $19.99USD/month for single apps. I've tried a few other options, but I always come back to Premiere and After Effects.

 

Premiere is, as he notes, great - I do a lot of video editing/sound editing as a job, and often use Final Cut (though you probably don't have a mac and it does cost money). Oddly enough, Lightworks isn't the most terrible program in the world.

 

If you're on a mac, Pixelmator is alright. Alternatively, the PS Elements on the App Store is slightly lower priced than the one obtained directly from Adobe. Also, like Jarik mentioned you can get a monthly payment plan from Adobe.

 

Any advice for Windows specific editing programs? Been working with FCP7 for the last three years, but switching things up now.

 

You can do a lot with Sony Vegas but it is quite intimidating and has a high learning curve

 

I tried it but I don't think it could edit .CR2s, which is the RAW file type for my current camera.

 

http://fileinfo.com/extension/cr2

Apparently you need a plug-in but GIMP can it seems.

UFRaw - http://registry.gimp.org/node/31

Edit: I couldn't recommended the plug-in though, from the comment's it seems to be more hassle than it's worth, and I've never personally tried it.

 

I imagine you're looking for something like rawtherapee.

 

I've been really pleased with Lightroom especially, but since I'm just shooting for the paper, a free option would be optimal.

Hopefully rawtherapee works out, or I can try installing darktable using an ISO of a Linux distribution. With emphasis on try.

 

I have HitFilm Express 2. Which is a $200 product... that I got for free by looking out and catching it when they were giving it away for free for a week. It's a pretty solid program that runs similar to Premiere.

So my advice is to pay attention to various video editing software and see when they do stuff like that.

 

Lightworks is pretty good I think, and it's free if you don't need the mp4 codec support. If you do, there's the option of using different free software to encode raw output (from lightworks), or paying something like 60-80$ a year to lightworks (I forget the exact amount) to cover the mp4 license.

If you don't need anything 'fancier' like multiple channels or green screening Windows Movie Maker is better than it used to be by a fair margin.

For image editing, GIMP Could still be on the table if you use a batch converter to convert your CR2's to an uncompressed .tiff or a low compression .png/.jpg, depending on what sort of fidelity you need.

 

Ok not to start a new thread:

I need a really simple video editor that can just be used to recut and merge mp4 files. Someone suggested Blender to me, but that just made me feel inadequate as a human being.

Can someone suggest something along the lines of what Movie maker used to be back in XP days, but capable of working with mp4 files?

 

Well I think the idea was that it technically does do video editing and is free. It is way to overcomplicated for what I need.

 

Why not just use Windows Movie Maker still if that's what you're looking for? Not sure if it did more in the XP days and that's what you meant, but as is it'll still allow basic edits.

 

Relevant question:
I'm looking to make a video to accompany an audiobook reading, preferably with the text of the story synced with the audio, probably a paragraph at a time. From experience, making text match up with words is painful. Does anyone know of a good technique to employ?