Which video editing software

[David Newton]

My little sony camera also will capture a pretty nice (short) video clip. I think they are MOV files. I'm doing this to make something to send to potential customers, maybe posting on u-tube. What software could I get (free) that would compress or clip these files, and maybe strip the audio, to send seperately? I don't want to become a video and soundman, just do something simple.

[Ken Sager]

If you have a newer Windows machine look for the Windows Movie Maker software already on your system. It came with my Windows XP Pro. You can do a lot with it and it's pretty easy to use. If you have a Mac there is iVideo or some such thing, too.

[c3hammer]

Hey Dave and Ken:

Those movies are Quicktime format. Windows Movie Maker, while a nice little free application doesn't import them directly.

I bucked up and bought Sony Vegas for editing video. It does all the formats and even comes with Acid and some pretty good DVD authoring software.

You can buy Quicktime Pro, but on a PC it doesn't seem to work very well for me.

You can download Bink & Smacker to convert for free here: http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

It works great, but creates huge uncompressed video files in the process that you probably want to delete after you've created the edited version.

Cheers,
pete

[alanz]

For a very flexible program at an affordable price, there's Sony Vegas Movie Studio (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/product.asp?pid=447) (I use their Platinum version)

It's a subset of the highly regarded (and high priced) Sony Vegas editing suite.

[David Newton]

Thanks, Ken, the Moviemaker program did what I wanted. Don't know what format my Sony camera makes, but Moviemaker imported it right in and reduced it to a windows media file, from about 14 megs to 1 meg. It clipped the ending though, have to figure that out.