What would be a good video editor for small business use?

SilverHawk

We have to produce web video on a fairly regular basis and have been using the crummy (technical term) video editing software that came with the camera. None of us were in the AV Crowd in school, and we just have to make the occasional serviceable web video, we are not trying to be the next Terrence Malick. Still the free software that was included causes us to spend unnecessary time editing because it is just so clunky. We don't need a lot of bells and whistles for our purposes, so a professional editing suite would be overkill and a waste of money. What would be a good option for software that would be appropriate for our amateur cameraman/editors to use to easily produce decent video?

Topic: Software
Answer this Question

Answers

5 total
jack12
Vote Up (9)

You didn't mention whether you use Macs or PCs.  For Mac users the gold standard for video editing is Final Cut Pro, but it sounds like that would be overkill for what you need.  You can literally edit a feature film using Final Cut Pro, but that makes it potentially overwhelming for "casual" use.  iMovie, which is also on Macs, as I'm sure the "i" tipped you off, sounds like it could do everything you need, and it is much more simple to use than Final Cut.  I am not as familiar with editing software for PCs; even though most of our computers are PCs, I always use the Macs for video editing.

jimlynch
Vote Up (8)

Here's a list of video editing software that's a good place to start. This includes freeware as well as proprietary software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software

SilverHawk
Vote Up (8)

Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into that!

sandeepseeram
Vote Up (8)

Video Edit Magic 4.4 is a new release for small business use. Video Edit Magic works with AVI, WAV, WMA, WMV, ASF, MPEG, QuickTime, AIFF, AU, SND and MIDI media file formats and BMP, GIF, JPEG and TGA image file formats.
You may also increase or decrease the duration of your video clip and change its play speed without needing to change the frame-rate of your video file.

ome amazing things that you can do with this software is: Capture Videos using any input device, digital video camera, Web Cam or VCR. Edit the audio and video components of a single media file separately. Give effects to your videos. Decorate your videos with more than 150 unique transitions. Overlay one video over another. Add a background score / voiceover to your video file. Vary the volume over time. Incorporate Text titles in your videos. Change the duration of your media file. Cut copy and paste clips from one media file to another. Join multiple media clips into a single media file. Trim your videos and audios. Edit the audio and video components of a single media file separately, etc.

 

 

Sandeep Seeram

 

keithshaw
Vote Up (4)

Like Jack12's answer, I'd recommend iMovie as well - it comes free on new versions of Macs, but the price of a Mac is worth it in order to get the iMovie software. I'd say about 95% of your video projects can be completed with iMovie.

On the PC side it gets trickier, but we found that we could get decent videos with Adobe Premiere Elements (the smaller version of Premiere), but that also requires a PC with a lot of memory and a pretty fast processor.

If you can go the Mac route, definitely iMovie for the types of projects that you were describing in the question.

Ask a question

Join Now or Sign In to ask a question.
Microsoft is upping the stakes in the growing market for cloud-based ERP, with its Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 products now available for deployment on its Azure service.
Nvidia wants to accelerate mobile-device performance with underlying tools that enable CPUs and graphics processors to work in a coherent manner.
Walmart has begun selling the Chromebook in 2,800 of its approximately 4,600 U.S. stores, expanding the reach of this still-on-the-margins platform. Staples too.
Skype announced Monday that its video-messaging service, which allows users to send a video of three minutes or less to their Skype contacts, is now out of beta and free to all users.
Jive Software is making a mobile push with new and enhanced mobile applications that have an emphasis on helping users of the enterprise social networking (ESN) suite create, not just view, content from their tablets and smartphones.
NewsGator has upgraded its Social Sites enterprise social networking (ESN) add-on for SharePoint to make the software better able to tailor the content, notifications and capabilities it displays for each user.
The latest batch of astronaut trainees includes a flight surgeon, fighter pilots and a Harvard professor.
SAP's in-memory platform HANA puts the software giant at risk of becoming a modern technology vendor with aging business applications, where it needs to ‘create a vision' of how a 21st century enterprise will operate, aided by in-memory technology.
Instart Logic is taking on the likes of Akamai and Amazon Cloudfront with a Web app-streaming service it says can cut in half the time it takes to load pages and applications to wireless devices.
'Big win' for the retailer, argues analyst, because no matter what happens, Best Buy stores gets free remodel