Moho Forum

I was looking for an inexpensive bare-bones video editor. The ones I found either couldn't handle 1280x720 or they degraded my image quality pretty severely.

Its editing paradigm is strictly linear, but for $30 Quicktime Pro let me stitch together a series of short .MOV files, with audio, then add a background soundtrack under the whole thing. That was all I needed. Unlike the "real" video editors I tried, Quicktime Pro seemed to be merely combining digital files, resulting in no degradation of image quality at all.

EDIT: Here's a screen capture comparison of my attempt at getting a high quality .mov file using the trial version of Cyberlink Power Director 8, versus the smaller file size and sharper output of Quicktime Pro.


I did lose a little quality later, doing a smaller-file-size export for upload to YouTube, but it still looked a lot better than the output of other low-end video editing software I tried.

why you don't try sony vegas movie studio ?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

I have vegas movie studio platinum, and is really cool, you have different options, but, for me, vegas movie studio, is the best and cheap....

That was next on my list to try when I had the good experience with Quicktime. If I start making longer pieces, I'll definitely give it a look.

I'm curious about how what editing software was degrading your files?

Which software were you using?

http://tv.isg.si/site/?q=node/873

list of some free editing software.

this one is free, I thin this is better for editing than quicktime

http://www.virtualdub.org/



or Free Video Editing Software for Windows:

http://jaypeeonline.net/freeware/free-v ... e-windows/

The main issue was blurriness and compression artifacts. Other discoveries:

Windows Movie Maker, the one that came with XP -- For 16:9, it couldn't save 1280x720, only 856x480. Being a Microsoft product, naturally it wouldn't load Quicktime files, and .avi files seem blurrier to me than .mov straight out of ASP.

Avid Free DV -- no longer freeware.
Avidemux -- I couldn't play anything it saved.
Videopad -- couldn't handle 1280x720, though I have liked it in the past for 640x480 work.
Wax -- seems to be for effects not editing.
Virtualdub -- Like Wax, I keep seeing this on lists of freeware video editors, but its own homepage describes it as an AVI-only video capture/processing utility. Do you actually edit with this, themonster?

When I found the Quicktime Pro solution, I had also tested one commercial trial version, Power Director 8, and its web output at a high quality setting was also blurry from too much compression, not much better than Windows Movie Maker.

There are also some new online video editing solutions,
http://savedelete.com/10-best-and-free- ... tware.html
but there's something creepy about corporations wanting to paw through people's unedited video, so I didn't try any of these.

You can get 1280 x 720 on Windows XP, search for WMV-HD-1280x720.prx. Download it and drop it into C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\Profiles.

It good for 720p HD. All my videos since Feb have been made in Windows Movie maker using this add on. Take a look at a few of my videos that have HD. I simply save uncompressed from AS as AVI, edit it in WMM and save using the add on I downloaded.

It may not be the quality you are looking for but it works for me. Good luck finding a solution.

Your 720p HD videos on YouTube look just fine expanded to full screen. I installed that .prx file in case I want to give .AVIs and WMM another try at some point, but for now I'm happy with the Quicktime Pro approach.

Steverino, I told you in my first post that I use Vegas Movie Studio platinum

Good look with quicktime pro.............

I Use it once and I would not suggest to anyone for video editing

I seem to be not finding the magic render setting. I am trying out sony I get lousy renders. What is the best way to export a render in ASP 7 so that I can use it in sony vegas and get good renders?