It really depends on what they want to do with it. I was a film studies/video major and we used avid (after spending the first year editing on actual film) but now most people do final cut pro. Both are really expensive unless you know of ways to get them cheaper. Really, I-Movie is the most user friendly software and it offers a quite a bit of flexibility all things considered but you have to have a Mac to run it. I have no idea what to recommend for a PC other than Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Express is cheaper but it is still about $300 (and I've never used it). Imovie comes free with any Mac (or OS upgrade). I am ridiculously out of practice with video editing since I haven't done anything for the past few years so I am sure there are programs I don't know about too.
I agree, it depends on what you're expecting to do with it. If you're on a PC and just need something basic, Windows Movie Maker is a good, free place to start. Windows 7 comes with Windows Live Movie Maker which has been dumbed down beyond most help, sad to say. I use WMM to get the sound out of my clips so I was glad to find that Vista's WMM works fine with Win7, though I don't know if that's the case with Win8 if that should be what you're working with.
So if you're talking about just needing one project done that's fairly basic, not needing a ton of timelines and such, WMM can probably do the job (I made my first dozen vids on WMM version 1 which couldn't even do titles ;) ). If it's for multiple projects or something that needs more oomph than WMM can handle, then Sony Vegas Movie Studio is the affordable version of Vegas Pro (I got Movie Studio 12 for $40, Vegas Pro 12 is in the range of $400 - 500, for comparison's sake). I'd love to have the extra bells and whistles in Pro but Movie Studio honestly is a pretty powerful program on its own, it uses the same editing engine as Pro and ought to be able to handle about anything you throw at it short of wanting to try to cleanly cut one character out of one source and mask them into another (and even then I've managed that with varying degrees of success back with Movie Studio 6 ;) ).
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-03-15 04:33 am (UTC)Really, I-Movie is the most user friendly software and it offers a quite a bit of flexibility all things considered but you have to have a Mac to run it.
I have no idea what to recommend for a PC other than Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Express is cheaper but it is still about $300 (and I've never used it). Imovie comes free with any Mac (or OS upgrade).
I am ridiculously out of practice with video editing since I haven't done anything for the past few years so I am sure there are programs I don't know about too.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-15 06:57 am (UTC)So if you're talking about just needing one project done that's fairly basic, not needing a ton of timelines and such, WMM can probably do the job (I made my first dozen vids on WMM version 1 which couldn't even do titles ;) ). If it's for multiple projects or something that needs more oomph than WMM can handle, then Sony Vegas Movie Studio is the affordable version of Vegas Pro (I got Movie Studio 12 for $40, Vegas Pro 12 is in the range of $400 - 500, for comparison's sake). I'd love to have the extra bells and whistles in Pro but Movie Studio honestly is a pretty powerful program on its own, it uses the same editing engine as Pro and ought to be able to handle about anything you throw at it short of wanting to try to cleanly cut one character out of one source and mask them into another (and even then I've managed that with varying degrees of success back with Movie Studio 6 ;) ).
Hope that helps! :D ♥!
no subject
Date: 2013-03-16 01:03 am (UTC)Pretty easy to use and a good value over some of the other "professional" type editors.