video editing app comparisons

[kvon]

Newbie question:

I'm getting ready to buy an editing app for a fairly simple project -- gonna make a slide show out of a bunch of old pictures. I've read some online reviews of some of the big contenders (Adobe, Pinnacle, ULead), got sort of a feel for their relative strengths & weaknesses. I think I've got one picked out based on what I read, but was wondering if anyone could give any feedback on how well those (or any other) apps would handle the following tasks, as these are the "deakbreakers" for me:

Synching with music (this is highest on my wish list) -- I know at least one app has a tool to generate its own music for the slide show, which I'm not at all interested in. I have all my own music, and have many instances where I want to show a picture at an exact moment during the music, sometimes several pictures in rapid succession. I also plan to do some rough editing of the music files to get the piece to a workable time, but would like the software to synch the duration slide show chapter to the exact duration of the music piece.

Would like to generate title frames, ala "Frasier" (TV show) -- Put the title up and then fade in to the next picture in the sequence.

Want to have control over chapeters: Just did a project like this with Nero VisionExpress, which insisted on making each of my "chapters" (sections of the slide show) into a "title" from the main menu, and made each individual picture a chapter. Nonsense.

Would like do to things with pan & zoom. E.g. would like to show picture A on the left side of the screen, then move picture B up in to the right side of the screen (animated), then do some sort of a blur transition into picture C shown on the whole screen.

Would be nice to do some sort of rolling credits, while showing pictures in a side bar.

Lots of questions I know, any info & insights really appreciated!

Kvon

[drfsupercenter]

Ulead Video Studio can do most if not all of these.

www.ulead.com to get a free trial.

[benbryant]

Hi kvon,

Video editing software comparison is the topic which never ends. Some of the entry level like Ulead VideoStudio 9 can fulfil your needs beautifully. In fact, it is built to set up everything ready for you from capturing, editing, to building DVD. The scene dection automatically detects any change of the scenes and adds appropriate transition there for you. But what if you think that Ulead VideoStudio 9 is way too simple and want to go beyond. Well, you can go for Ulead MediaStudio Pro 8 or Sony Vegas 6. I can tell you which one of these two is better. Only you can do that youself. For these higher end programs, you'll have better encoder but you have to do everything yourself from the beginning to the end. For example, you have to add the trnasitions, tweak the duration...You have to collect and read a lot of free tutorials from internet and or buy books from book stores. You'll then be able to create a much better movies. Most of the programs do come with free trial. So check them out:

http://www.ulead.com/products/runme.htm#video

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp

Regards

[kvon]

Hi kvon,

For these higher end programs, you'll have better encoder

Thanks for the info...
Can you tell me what an encoder does? I understand the generic concept, just am not familiar with specifically what it does in this context. AND... this might be related -- was wondering if I'm going to have any control of the resolution of the images I import into the slide show from the originals? i.e. if I scan them in at a higher resolution (say 4800 or 9600 dpi) am I going to lose some of that when I import them into the video project?

Thanks again!
Kvon

[benbryant]

The video from miniDV tape when tranfer to PC will become Windows movie with .avi extension. In order to make DVD, you need to encode it to MPEG-2. The lower end MPEG-2 encoder can produce an OK result in small TV but playing on bigger TV you'll be able to see the different. That why the prices for MPEG-2 encoders are different. For example, Pegasus Inc. makes an affordable encoder for less then $40.00 US and Canopus Procoder 2 costs about $500.00 US only encoder itself. Yes, it is too expensive but people still go for it because they know for sure to get the best quality from it.

About import images to the video editor, scan test them to your PC and see how they look (too high resolution doesn't mean the best), just remember to save them in Bitmap or .bmp format which is bigger file size but better quality. What you see on a scanned image on your monitor is what you'll get on your video. Use a image editor to crop the image dimentions to 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL. The trick is to save most of the image without cutting too much. For example, you have an image with dimentions 1600x1200. If you crop it down to 720x480 right away, you just keep less than half of the original picture and the objects in the image look too big for video. So the best way is to reduce the image size with the Constrain Proportions which is the feature to increase/reduce the Width and Height proportionally together down as close as to 720x480 without going below that. First, I reduce image size 720x540 which is close enough. Next, I crop it down to 720x480 - a small cuts at the top and the bottom of the picture. You see, by doing this you save almost the entire image and your image will look proportionally OK on video too. Good luck

Please come back any tiem for more help

Regards

[kvon]

Thanks Ben, this sounds like great info. Couple of quick questions:

Save them in bmp format -- I assume that means that the video editng apps will have no problem importing bmp files?

Crop to 720x480 - I understand the proces you're describing to the get image to that dimension, but what's the magic about that particular dimension? What does that get me? Do they import better that way for some reason?

Thanks!
Kvon

[benbryant]

Most editing programs accept JPEG and Bitmap readily, bitmap retains better quality although its filesize is larger. You care more for quality, don't you?

720x480 is the NTSC resolution for video frame. Therefore, if your image is set to 720x480, it will cover the entire screen without distortion. Remember that it only applies if your original image size is bigger than 720x480. If it is smaller, leave it alone

Regards

[kvon]

My apologies for dragging this out - I know these are greenhorn questions, but everything you tell me raises new questions. (Alternatively, if you could provide any links to info elsewhere on the web I'd be happy to read it, cuz I obviously have a lot to learn).

So... you say 720x480 is the NTSC resolution for video frame. Does that mean then, that if I have an image which is say, 4060 x 6080 pixels, and I import that into a DVD and show it on my TV, that the 720x480 resolution is the limiting factor and any resolution I had beyond that is wasted or lost??

So if I import that high res image into my DVD project file, what happens to the image between the import and showing up on my TV screen? i.e. is the image actually saved away in a lower reduced res format, or is it stored in high res and just shows up on the TV looking like low res if it's not a HDTV?

Thanks again!

[benbryant]

http://www.microscope-microscope.org/imaging/image-resolution.htm

Regards

[megamachine]

For the project you describe, I'd go with Ulead VideoStudio 9. Not too steep a learning curve. It has two video tracks and two audio tracks, quite a few transitions and video filters, titling functions, and a music generation tool that "composes" music to fit whatever time frame you specify. You can also import or record your own music, though editing sound in it is not as precise as you may like, so you may want an external audio app if you plan to do a lot of audio editing. You can "animate" still pics with overlays, filters, panning and zooming. Authoring the project into a DVD is fairly straight forward, too, though with some limitations. You can specify chapter breaks where you want but there is a limited selection of menu templates and designs, so if you have complex menu design in mind you will have to use some other app for authoring. The encoding and rendering are not bad, and you can burn directly from the app, though Ulead has very specific instructions on how to do that, owing to an apparent bug when burning from the timeline. Anyway, it's a decent all in one tool, and I think the other apps will have too high a learning curve and may not be worth the effort, unless you plan to dedicate yourself to doing a lot of these sorts of projects over the long term. Hope this helps.

[kvon]

Thanks, that helps alot. ULead is the one I was leaning towards based on user reviews I'd read. I've got another audio editing app I've been using with good results, so I'll probably continue to use that to bypass the learning curve of a new one.

I had heard that there was an issue with the ULead, something about any chapter & title edits you make don't get saved to the project file? So if you close down & restsart you're at square 1 with that? Seems like kind of a big issue, I would think ULead would want to address that in a patch or something... Just wondering if you happened to know anything about that.

Many Thanks!
kvon

[megamachine]

Could be true, the authoring part opens what appears to be a separate app, and there is no save function there, though I believe if you close it and open it again without exiting VS9, the chapter points will still be there. As far as saving that data in the project file, I don't think it is saved. Sort of a pain, but the authoring part is rather basic, so you can easily retrace your steps.

[kvon]

Hey guys, thanks for all the info. This may be getting off on a tangent somewhat (I suppose I could re-post this message somewhere else)... But I'm still wondering about resolution:

I went back & checked out my Nero VisionExpress (which I'm going to replace, regardless because it's too limited, just a question of what to replace it with). Turns out that the Nero software does indeed let you set the resolution of the DVD burn, but only goes up to 720x480 (in the NTSC mode). I burned a test DVD and watched it on my TV, (a 27", 600 line Toshiba CRT), and the resolution was pretty unimpressive. It occurred to me that if I could get the DVD up to a resolution that would match my computer screen (1400x1050), I could run the computer through a projector and show this presentation that way.

So 3 questions:
Am I going to find any authoring software that will let me set the resolution up to 1400x1050, or even anything above 720x480 for that matter??

If yes -- would that hi resolution DVD play on a 5 yr old DVD player??

AND... what would happen if I were to play that hi-res DVD on a low res, old-fashioned TV set? Assuming the aspect ratio were the same 4:3, would the resolution be an issue?

Thanks again,
Kvon