I am new to this on a trial version of ulead it took 4 hours to convert to mpeg. Is this normally how long this should take. I am not familiar with all the terms I keep seeing and was hoping to buy a single program (as ulead does) to edit convert and burn vcds. Is there a good program like this out there?

Thanks Michelle

-- Michelle Olivier (mogoboco@houston.rr.com), April 03, 2002

Answers

well, i think the most user friendly software and good software out there today is

MGI Video Wave (V.4 the latest i believe) Ulead Video Studio (v.5 or 6 latest but for authoring dvd, if you do not plan on saving to dvd v.4 will do you just fine)

You may notice i didn't include premier. it is probably the best out there but it has a steep learning curve. if you are willing to read a lot, and practice making vids before making your own vids then go out and get it. (it also carries a big price tag).

well, about your video. you said you were converting a video. well a couple things that would slow down a render are:

- new video has a higher frame rate than the original - new video has a different size than the original

now you didn't mention the format you were converting the video from. if you are just clipping DV (from digital camcorders -recording on digital / hi8) tapes then MGI is very good for clipping coz it uses smart render. it only renders the part of video that is affected the rest of the video u can say is cut and paste therefore very fast when it comes to rendering DV vids. it also has a nice interface for cliping vids. but when you come to editing sound it sucks big time coz it loads up the entire soundtrack and often the comp just locks up coz you probably run out of memory. also you cannot stretch music over multiple clips on the time line.

ULEAD on the other hand, (has direct render to DV source:camcorder) nice feature but it isn't always what you want to do!!! anywayz it has cooler transitions than MGI, you can stretch music over multiple clips. now the draw back is it has a really bad clipping feature (you can use the wizard, but once u exit the clipping wizard you cannot go back so you are stuck to clip your vid w/in ulead itself. why i say it sucks is coz when you clip you do not have sound. say you want to clip off that stupid thing your uncle said on the video, well if you didn't get a chance to do it in the wizard then it will be trial and error. another thing that i don't like bout ULEAD is that it renders the video to preview it (if not transferring to DV, you see what i menat up there you don't always need it)

all in all, if you are planing on editing videos as a hobby, i would recommend you get both software they aren't too expensive about US$150 (for the both of them) now i did that calculation in my head they might be cheaper than that.

welcome to the world of video editing

~m

-- ~m (mtekayo@yahoo.com), April 03, 2002.

Premiere is expensive on its own but that is only if u don't look where. It IS the ONE to have, dump aside Video Studio and VideoWave, et al. Premiere is supposed to be >US$500, but at www.videoguys.com, the complete ADSTech PyroPlatinum package is only US$280, which includes a top-rated OHCI FireWire card, a complete ver of Premiere 6, plus a host of other cool programs. For that matter few people really buy Premiere alone, but rather bundled with some other h/w, mostly FireWire/analogue capture cards, he combination of which is in most cases cheaper than Premiere alone. Of course Premiere has a steep learning curve. But editing video is NOT supposed to be a la-di- dah event as casual as sending a line of e-mail; those serious about the whole thing will sit and devote their time to it, Premiere notwithstanding.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), April 06, 2002.

you just psyched me up for premiere. i guess i am going to unpack that old version that i have stashed up somewhere

-- m (mtekayo@yahoo.com), April 11, 2002.