So my boss wants to buy a camcorder, that allows the video to be saved to SD Card, for this project as well as future projects, the question is what software is the best one to use for video editing? I've got some Adobe Photoshop Experience and was thinking Adobe Primere Pro so we can convert the video to a single, high-definition (720p) video in MP4/H.264 format, converted/post-processed to WebM format. Is my suggestion correct??

 

Abel Lopez

You'll hear PC users say Adobe Premiere Pro, and you'll hear Mac users say Final Cut Pro.

 

I've used both at university and for personal projects and they're both reasonable, although they take a lot of getting used to. I never got on with Final Cut Pro if I'm honest - I hate the taste of Apple (excuse the pun) and this video editor just wasn't user friendly, whereas Premiere Pro is structured and presented in the same format as every other Adobe product so the learning curve was shortened.

 

I'd say Premiere Pro, but that could be bias against Apple. Adobe rules, more to the point though.

pinnacle studio

avid

sony vegas

My options are limited since I don't run a MAC yet, but wanting to do so for digital editing stuff. :-) Thanks for the advice, will try Priemere, Pinnacle, Avid, Vegas :-D

I've done editing work in the past using all of the above plus editing suites, so will give my opinion if it helps. Believe it or not, FC is the standard in certain filmmaker circles. Well, short film and documentaries - not Hollywood. I applied for quite a few positions when I was starting out only to realise that my Premiere knowledge was relatively redundant. However, Premiere is an excellent package and what with it being Adobe, if you have the suite or cloud, they can be integrated very easily.

 

At the end of the day, it's about ability and you don't really need to a Mac or FC to produce great work. I've seen some amazing editing done with Microsoft Movie Maker. Granted, you don't have anything like Chroma keys, cropping and after tools (last time I checked anyway) but it's free. Pinnacle is a good Hobbyist piece of kit (received it with an editing card yonks ago), Vegas was pretty good too. When I used it, Avid was expensive and quite complex - then again, they tried to replicate an actual editing suite into software!

 

If you have it, use Premiere Pro. Even if you become very skilled as an editor, you can continue to use it. I haven't used the FC that was released in 2011 but it's a little more affordable than Premiere and I would probably use that simply because I've now got used to it. Biggest advice though is to invest in a couple of decent drives with large storage and read/write speeds. It will make a massive difference with editing!!

Premiere pro or sony vegas