I was looking for some lightweight NLE/cutting software solutions recently. Obviously Windows users have Windows Movie Maker, and Mac users have iMovie. Neither are particularly lightweight, and both have a number of feature restrictions. So in the interests of sharing info, here are a few other NLE options. Note that I haven’t had time, resources, or the inclination to thoroughly test all these software packages. Please report back in the comments if a particular solution was helpful or if you experienced any issues.

SimpleMovieX
www.aeroquartet.com/SimpleMovieX/
Free “unlimited trial” for Mac. Simple editing, similar to Quicktime Pro’s interface. Has some unique features like batch processing, auto commercial detection in TV recordings, and long-GOP keyframe detection. Demo version is full-featured, but has “slower saving.” No trial time limitation.

ZS4
www.zs4.net
Free for Mac/Windows/Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc. Video Editing/Compositing. HDV formats aren’t supported directly, but there are workarounds. Lightweight, and a Portable version is available here.

Jahshaka
jahshaka.org
Free for Mac/Windows. Editing, compositing, 3d. Looks like a very interesting option, seems quite modular and flexible.

Cinelerra
cv.cinelerra.org / heroinewarrior.com (multiple versions explanation here).
Free for Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc. Mature, full-featured digital video editing software.

Kino DV
www.kinodv.org
Free for Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc. Mature standard-definition DV editing.

LiVES
lives.sourceforge.net
Free for Linux, BSD, Unix. Windows and XBOX support via bootable live CD. Mac/Darwin support if you care to compile your own.

KDENLIVE
kdenlive.sourceforge.net
Free Linux. Seems slightly limited in scope, DV editing.

Avid FreeDV
www.avid.com/products/freedv/
Free for Mac/Windows. Avid FreeDV is no longer available from Avid, but you can still find some mirrors here and there.

VirtualDub
www.virtualdub.org
Free for Windows. Not really an NLE, does capture, processing, encoding, and has extensive filter support. The Swiss Army knife of video processing.

Avidemux
fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
Free for Mac/Windows/Linux, etc. Simple editing tools. Not really so much of a full-featured NLE as a suite of tools for working with streams and formats. A Mac alternative to VDub.

ffmpegX
homepage.mac.com/major4/
Free for Mac. Not an editor, does split, demux, crop, etc. Better at encoding, filters, handles subtitles, author DVD folders, etc. Good addition to any editor’s toolkit. Another VirtualDub-like option for Macintosh users.

Update:

DVJ Imaging
djv.sourceforge.net/index.html
Free for Mac/Windows/Linux, etc. Professional movie playback and image processing software for the film and computer animation industries.

Blender
www.blender.org
Free for Mac/Windows/Linux, etc. A mature OSS project that provides a complete suite for 3D content creation (and a great sequence editor, apparently).

Mark your calendar! Final Cut Pro professionals attending NAB 2008 will be gathering once again for the Yak-tastic FCPUG SuperMeet. Now in it’s 7th year, the SuperMeet will be held at the MGM Grand Hotel Grand Ballroom on Wednesday, April 16. Doors open at 5pm, scheduled events start around 6:30pm and continue through 10:30. Reservations are $15 and include 3 raffle tickets (there are about $65K worth of prizes being given away). As always there is free food and a cash bar, and the first 250 to arrive will get SuperBags. The agenda is packed with Apple-y goodness, so head on over to the FCPUG site to reserve your spot before it’s too late (the SuperMeet generally sells out in advance). The FreshDV crew will be there as well, come on over and introduce yourself if you see us.

Media 100 has announced their video codecs are available now for download at their support website.

With these free codecs, editors and graphics professionals can playback and render modern and legacy Media 100 media files in any QuickTime-based application. The codecs include Universal Binary versions of the Media 100 i and Media 100 HD codecs as well as the PowerPC Instant Media 844/X codec.

You can also get the codecs free as part of the Media 100 Producer time-limited Trial Version. Now if they would only announce a few reasons to actually use Media 100…

We mentioned Avid’s “New Thinking” campaign launch recently, and the direction they are now headed to woo young and experienced editors alike to the Media Composer platform. There’s been a lot of discussion on the announcement, some positive, some negative. Here’s a few interesting comments by blogger Mike Jones. Excerpt from The Death of Avid (started a long time ago):

“The Avid interface, the Avid mentality, is one born out of keeping traditional editors relaxed and comfortable, designed around ensuring traditional broadcasters felt secure in their major financial outlay on hardware. But every year since Avid’s inception there have been less traditional editors to keep relaxed and comfortable. Every year there were new editors to take their place. Editors who were Digital Natives, not Digital Immigrants. Editors for whom the analogue language, the tape-to-tape paradigm, the hardware base, the stoic mechanics, made no sense - seemed simply old, archaic, inflexible and even irrational. The Digital Native editor whose life centres around a laptop so powerful they barely understand the idea of an ‘off-line’ edit, looks at the Mojo and the Adrenaline with the same quizzical smile as computer nerd looks at a ‘mainframe’ computer as big as a room from the 1970’s.”

“…I feel angry that a company with such dominance, such power, such influence over the creative artform of our age was so condescending of its users as to refuse to grow with them, refuse to let them grow, refuse to aknowledge new ideas from new younger minds. I feel somewhat angry such a company would not seek to be more accessible, more efficient and instead trade their business on excess, superfluousness and a culture of snobbery whose only means of distinction was to forge a hard line in the sand and declare Real Professionals on their side and Child-like Wannabes on the other.”

Excerpt from Avid’s ‘New Thinking’ isnt ‘new’ to anyone but themselves:

“That Avid have launched a new online support portal for Avid users that utilizes a peer/user ranking system to rate the usefulness of posts and tutorials is positively laughable for its lack of vision. Where have you been Avid? The rest of the digital production world has been fully engaged developer-sponsored, on-line peer-exchange for years. Welcome to the 21st century, we hope you enjoy your stay.”

Strong words, to be sure. And I imagine that many could take issue with some of the claims (like the opinion that Media Composer offers “nothing” over other NLE options at twice the price). However, much of what is said here rings true in my ears. What do you think?

Editing Organazized has two great posts up with tips and tricks for getting the best-quality slowmo footage out of Final Cut Studio using Compressor. The first outlines the basic workflow, post #2 delves deeper into Compressor’s behavior at various retiming percentages and provides examples of the sort of results you can expect. In the footage for this example, best results degraded past 1/4 speed. At 25%, Compressor’s Optical Flow appears to preserve much more detail than what you can expect directly out of Final Cut Pro. Very informative articles.

Editor Harry Miller has shared two audio editing/mixing tutorials for Avid NLE users. It’s great to see more and more user-generated instructional material for the Avid platform as of late.

(Via Norman Hollyn)

SRF notes that while Avid leads the fanboy bragging rights game with most of the major category Oscar winners using an Avid tool at some point of production, the Coen Brothers “No Country for Old Men” marked the first film with an all-digital Mac workflow to garner a statuette.

As with any new technology, there is a learning curve and some pain for early adopters. One of the issues with the CompactFlash media workflow introduced with the new Sony HVR-Z7U and HVR-S270U camcorders is the fact that CF cards are formatted in FAT32, therefore they have a 4GB filesize limitation (that’s about 20 minutes of video). Much like Panasonic’s method of spanning P2 cards, these new HDV camcorders simply split the recorded M2T clips at 4GB for rejoining later. Sony has released a software utility for PC users that can address this rejoining process, as well as provide renaming assistance if you’ve managed to record clips on different cards with the same filename. My understanding is that it’s basically a standalone import utility that will automatically re-join split clips as it pulls them off the cards. You can download it here.

There is also a new Final Cut Pro plugin from Sony that enables access to the CF media from FCP’s Log and Transfer function. Again, this is a very P2-like workflow. One minor difference is that the Log and Transfer Preview is inactive. Once files are selected, the software wraps the M2T streams into Quicktime and automatically joins 4GB-spanned segments as it transfers the clips. I have to say that I am quite impressed that Sony has delivered this particular plugin so soon. It looks like a simple and trouble-free workflow for Mac editors. You can download both versions and instructions here. We have continuing coverage of these two camcorders here.

Here is a short tutorial that covers the basic steps necessary to prepare a Final Cut Pro sequence for color finishing in Apple Color.

Over at kenstone.net there is a FCP tutorial on how to get best results when outputting Standard Definition DVDs from PMW-EX1 sourced HD footage.

Digital Camcorder News has posted a review of Premiere Elements 4. Here’s an excerpt:

Adobe makes it easy to create quick, appealing home movies with the latest installment of Adobe Premiere Elements. A slick interface, better integration with Photoshop Elements, and better support for Flash-based sites like YouTube make Adobe Premiere Elements 4 a great choice for video projects, but the current lack of AVCHD support makes it a product I cannot fully endorse for anyone wanting to edit non-HDV video.

In an extremely detailed and well thought-out post, Roughly Drafted calmly pours a steaming mug of SimmaDown for the video community that is perpetuating the rumor that Apple is shopping it’s Pro Applications around to the highest bidder. These rumors really surfaced after Apple’s announcement that, like Avid, they would not have a booth presence at NAB 2008. This post is well worth the read if you are even mildly concerned that Final Cut Studio will be leaving the Apple fold in the near future. Continue reading ‘Reports of ProApps Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated’

Ahh, the Final Cut Pro vs. Avid debate. Much like the Mac vs. PC flamewars, this debate is destined to rage for as long as the two software packages exist. I believe this is because the choice of editing software is largely subjective and based on what you specifically demand out of a system and what your post workflow requires. So while I have built a Mac/FCP editing system and workflow for my work, I would be loathe to crown it as generally better than Avid, or any other NLE for that matter…too many variables exist, and everyone’s needs are different. I’m finding it better for ME at this point. That’s why it’s refreshing to read personal accounts like this one, an ACE feature film editor who is used to working with Avid but was forced to use FCP for a specific project. He lays out some of the differences between the two NLE’s as well as his specific likes and dislikes. A good read.

(Via Scott Simmons)

This article is part of a series of tests FreshDV conducted with the Sony XDCAM PMW-EX1. Thanks to Miami rental house and Sony dealer Midtown Video for providing a XDCAM EX camera. And thanks to DSC Labs for providing test chart patterns. You can read more about ours and others experiences with this camera here.

For our testing Midtown Video provided FreshDV with a EX1 camcorder with the 8GB SxS media card. Before the camera arrived, I downloaded the latest XDCAM Transfer software and SxS drivers. I also had to ensure that I was at the latest FCP version, 6.0.2, and I also brought my Tiger OS and Quicktime versions up date using Software Update (I’ve been a bit behind, these things make me nervous). I should note that I am using Final Cut Studio on a PPC G5 2.7 Dual. I did not have a computer with ExpressCard slot available for these tests, so the USB connection on the camcorder was used. It simply uses a standard USB cable with mini connector on the camcorder end. Footage shot was a mixed bag…most of the time the card ended up with a mix of SP, HQ, and overcranked 60p footage on it. But regardless of the format, the import procedure into FCP is the same. I wanted to note my experiences with that process. For starters we should note a few things about the camcorder.

Below the rotating handgrip is a small flip-up plastic cover that conceals a line of output connections…A/V, Component mini, and USB mini. The EX has both Camera and Media (VTR) modes, but you can connect to your computer in either mode. When you connect the USB mini cable to the camera and computer, the EX will ask on the display if you would like to connect to the computer…Execute or Cancel. You can use the jogstick at the top of the handgrip to select and click Execute. As a side note, this camera makes you feel really powerful…every confirmation action prompts you to choose “Execute!” The only way that process could be geekier is if the camera gave you a “Make It So!” option. But I digress… Continue reading ‘XDCAM EX1 Hands-On - Final Cut Pro Workflow’

Post Production Standards has two great posts up with recommendations on naming clips for Visual Effects and turnover. They advocate using version numbers rather than dates for sequences, and outline a simple method for naming VFX shots that is extensible and easy to understand. Simple, yet effective info.