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What do you use to make YouTube videos and the like?


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What do the people who make those awesome OCR and Zircon videos use? I just tackled for my first time ever making a video with a variety of effects and lots of timing editing with Videopad Editor. It's a great program except that it crashes literally EVERY 90 SECONDS! I need to use something a little better than Windows Movie Maker. Any suggestions? I would like to show you the video I made but I can't because it keeps crashing every time I load the subtitles. AAAAAARGH!

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So you clearly have a PC.

I would seriously suggest Adobe Premiere. It's one of the seriously great video editing softwares out there. I've heard about something called Vegas? Never used it, but I've heard that's great too.

As for visual effects, if you're wanting to get serious, Adobe After Effects is your best bet.

I use Final Cut, but that's because I've got a Mac. Final Cut is a Mac-user thing only. I seriously am thinking about getting Premiere, though.

Yeah... Windows Movie Maker seriously sucks. Of course, I haven't used it in like 8 years so it probably is a bit better now than it was then. I still preferred iMovie. iMovie HD, yo.

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If you don't like things crashing, Adobe Premiere CS6 or later. Sony Vegas 10 or 12 are perhaps easier to understand, but they're not nearly as stable as Premiere. Plus Dynamic Link makes Premiere work well with the Adobe suite; you can import your comps directly from After Effects or Photoshop without having to render something out.

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Stability in Vegas Pro 12 is nowhere near the horror show it was in ver. 11, at least in my experience. I still keep ver. 9 around just in case, but 12 has become my go-to, not mentioning the new productivity functions and that it's part of the full software suite that includes DVD (and Blu-Ray) Architect and the great After Effects alternative called HitFilm 2 Ultimate. HitFilm by itself is quite a full-featured editor on its own, and it's relatively dirt cheap. zircon was gaga over it, last I heard.

That said, most of what I do comes with the help of other valuable tools:

Photoshop Elements - to which I finally moved on from Paint Shop Pro 8 - for building graphics, some titles and some credit sequences

AVISynth in conjunction with VirtualDub, free software that's absolutely essential for sophisticated pre-processing of video assets in ways even the prosumer apps can't manage - "cleaning up other people's crap" is the layman's explanation of what they do best - and were a giant help in preparing all the Balance & Ruin interview clips where the quality was (to put it as politely as possible) all over the freakin' map.

And don't forget, before we toss around names like Premiere and After Effects as if they're anything close to affordable solutions (those who warez or piratez, good on you, I suppose), that pro or near-pro results can be had on free or cheap tools with enough work and know-how; if you're crazy enough to learn all about the scripting capabilities of AVISynth, that may be all you ever need.

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And don't forget, before we toss around names like Premiere and After Effects as if they're anything close to affordable solutions (those who warez or piratez, good on you, I suppose), that pro or near-pro results can be had on free or cheap tools with enough work and know-how; if you're crazy enough to learn all about the scripting capabilities of AVISynth, that may be all you ever need.

True, just wanna say that the new Adobe CC suite is only $20 a month for students. The subscription format is pretty affordable and you have access to ALL their programs, no more "Production Premium" package or whatever, it's all there.

However it's $50 a month for non-students. sux.

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True, just wanna say that the new Adobe CC suite is only $20 a month for students. The subscription format is pretty affordable and you have access to ALL their programs, no more "Production Premium" package or whatever, it's all there.

However it's $50 a month for non-students. sux.

That is a pretty good deal, and the more serious one is, the better an investment it becomes. I am jelly sometimes at the sweet deals students get.

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You can get After Effects 7 and Adobe Premier Pro 2 for free from Adobe themselves at the moment (along with CS2... well, everything). You need an account, but once you make one, the only thing standing between you and 3 DVD's worth of Adobe software is hitting "I agree." Yes, Adobe has a "Do you promise you owned the original software?" disclaimer, but come on... even they know the people who downloaded that stuff didn't own it. All that software's from 2005, so it's already unsupported (the page with the "I agree: button even says so). And yes, all the software has a serial number listed to put in once it's installed.

I'd post a link, but due to the "Do you promise you used to own it?" disclaimer, I don't know how OCR's link police will react. So...

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Guess that depends on how new your Mac or PC is. For someone like me, who's still using their 2004 PC, that stuff runs just fine. I'm sure the slightly older Mac OSes probably wouldn't have much trouble with them, unless compatibility took a shit from whatever was the current OS in 2005, to the ones that came after them.

Edited by The Coop
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Yeah my computer is an '09 iMac model, so I'm not entirely sure if that will work. In 2006 (I think) they started manufacturing Macs processed by Intel. Before that it was all PowerPC. Other things that were made for PowerPC processed computers that I've tried installing on this computer don't really work.

Though I have actually tried installing Spider-Man 2 (the game) into my Mac and there were no issues, and that game released when all Macs were still running on PowerPC, so I don't know. I guess I'll just have to go and figure it out.

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Stability in Vegas Pro 12 is nowhere near the horror show it was in ver. 11, at least in my experience. I still keep ver. 9 around just in case, but 12 has become my go-to, not mentioning the new productivity functions and that it's part of the full software suite that includes DVD (and Blu-Ray) Architect and the great After Effects alternative called HitFilm 2 Ultimate. HitFilm by itself is quite a full-featured editor on its own, and it's relatively dirt cheap. zircon was gaga over it, last I heard.

That said, most of what I do comes with the help of other valuable tools:

Photoshop Elements - to which I finally moved on from Paint Shop Pro 8 - for building graphics, some titles and some credit sequences

AVISynth in conjunction with VirtualDub, free software that's absolutely essential for sophisticated pre-processing of video assets in ways even the prosumer apps can't manage - "cleaning up other people's crap" is the layman's explanation of what they do best - and were a giant help in preparing all the Balance & Ruin interview clips where the quality was (to put it as politely as possible) all over the freakin' map.

And don't forget, before we toss around names like Premiere and After Effects as if they're anything close to affordable solutions (those who warez or piratez, good on you, I suppose), that pro or near-pro results can be had on free or cheap tools with enough work and know-how; if you're crazy enough to learn all about the scripting capabilities of AVISynth, that may be all you ever need.

Yeahhhhhhh! I love VirtualDub! I also use Sony Vegas, and it's practically something I can do in my sleep now. =D

I'd like to get After Effects someday, but it's not a necessity for me.

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Yeah my computer is an '09 iMac model, so I'm not entirely sure if that will work. In 2006 (I think) they started manufacturing Macs processed by Intel. Before that it was all PowerPC. Other things that were made for PowerPC processed computers that I've tried installing on this computer don't really work.

Though I have actually tried installing Spider-Man 2 (the game) into my Mac and there were no issues, and that game released when all Macs were still running on PowerPC, so I don't know. I guess I'll just have to go and figure it out.

All it'll cost is some time and bandwidth to find out, so it couldn't hurt to try.

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Thanks a lot for the help everyone. I appreciate it.

I guess some details about what exactly I'm looking for would help. To be honest Videopad Editor does everything I need. It just keeps crashing and I don't know how to make it stop. I just need some the range of effects I need will not be huge. I have mostly just used fades, zooming, camera movement, brightness, and a shatter transition effect. Oh, and opacity. I would assume that these are all the most basic effects. Considering how close I am to completing the video if it doesn't crash, I think I'd be wasting some money if I got something that costs hundreds of dollars. I think Videopad was like fifty bucks or something.

So After effects is just for additional effects? Considering that my tasks may be fairly simple for now, perhaps I don't need anything as flashy as that. . . Someday, though.

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I just found this top ten video editing software page.

http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

The one I have, Videopad is number 7. Among all that were mentioned, premiere was said to be very stable and that appeals to me. If someone could vouch for Cynberlink Powerdirector I would just get that one since it is the cheapest and seems to be the best.

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Here's a list from one of my favorite resources... non-linear editors in order of aggregate user rating:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-editors-advanced?orderby=Rating

VideoPad seems like a nice piece of software apart from your crash issues. PowerDirector may have its own crash issues according to some of the comments. In case your situation doesn't work out, maybe one of these can help you.

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VideoPad should be non-linear: it basically means the work is non-destructive, in which the original media assets are not affected or altered in any way by what you do to them in the timeline, so you can create as many new files or projects as you want using the original files. Obviously a better solution than in the old days of duping VHS tapes, or even older days of splicing film.

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So After effects is just for additional effects? Considering that my tasks may be fairly simple for now, perhaps I don't need anything as flashy as that. . . Someday, though.

After Effects isn't just "additional effects". It's a huge visual effects software. That's what it's made to do.

Premiere is probably your best bet, if something like Windows Movie Maker isn't good enough for ya.

But again, I'm hearing a lot of good about Sony Vegas, so if that's cheaper, go for that.

Obviously a better solution than in the old days of duping VHS tapes, or even older days of splicing film.

See I'm not even that old and I can remember the whole VHS process.

Technology moves way too fast

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So After effects is just for additional effects? Considering that my tasks may be fairly simple for now, perhaps I don't need anything as flashy as that. . . Someday, though.

After Effects is, in essence, a bigger, more robust Flash-like program. You can do less complicated edits to video and audio, you can add text, images, create and move objects around, animate objects (especially in newer versions), apply many visual and some audio effects, and it's all done in a pretty easy to follow timeline setup that shares similarities with Flash. It can also export video (avi, mov, mp4, etc.), flash (swf and flv), and some other formats. It'll never replace real video/audio editors, but it does do the job well if you're not needing anything overly complex to be done (though if you're really good with it, you can likely get it to do some pretty complex things in that area).

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imho, VideoPad = Windows Movie maker 6.0 and 2.6 with much better usability and slightly more powerful effects. Windows Live Movie Maker on the other hand is a waste of time for any kind of editing that is higher than basic family gathering home video type stuff. Just throwing that out there.

I'd also like to vouch for Final Cut, Vegas, Premiere, and After Effects. To answer your question, I don't think you can go wrong with Vegas and Premiere for the best all-around editing, specifically geared towards Youtube/Vimeo/etc. type videos. But when you do want to take that next step there are a lot interesting things you can do with After Effects, I just would not recommend it for the types of videos you're asking for because it's kind of like bringing a Fire Truck to a water balloon fight.

(most definitely not downplaying Youtube videos; just pointing out that massive video soft-wares like After Effects are capable of doing much, much more than most amateur consumers really need, imo. like-wise, After Effects isn't really something to consider for efficient time-line based editing at all. after Effects is mostly what you'd want to use for creating lots of fancy visuals and effects, hence the title, and like Coop said, it's pretty good for basic animations as well).

I'm most certainly not a pro on this subject (yet :nicework: ) because I mostly just dabble in video editing from time to time when I don't feel like asking others to make videos for me, but judging by what you're asking for I think Sony Vegas should be a pretty nice fit.

and screw all you students out there... you have no idea how ridiculously awesome these student discounts are becoming nowadays. >_<

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