Cheapest and Effective Option
Cheapest and Effective Option
Being the King of the Cheap Bastards I exhausted far too much time finding a workable solution. I did however end up with a workable solution, so I'll outline the basic premise of what I have learned. For one, if you plan to become a movie producer extraordinaire, I would suggest investing in something more official but can't suggest one for purchase.
Video conversion for H264 and any of the Free converters are a pain, time consuming and result in nothing more than frustration. A little perhaps unknown fact is that YouTube will convert almost all known formats for you, even H264. With that conversion option, it can be captured back by VideoCatcher as a file for editing. Takes a little time but, hassle free.
You already probably have WMM, which I find a pain also. WMM has some nice features, but the constant fails and crashes when finalizing is again nothing more than frustrating.
The Free video editors I have found that work best despite the limitations after the Free Trial use are NCH Videopad Video Editor and Pinnacle Video Spin. I'll summarize the pros/cons.
NCH: relatively fast and not a resource hog. Very simple, easy to use and even after Trial still allows output of movie and will make A DVD. All in all works painlessly. Drawback is no frills such as titles and transitions. Does however accept all formats so far, and outputs as AVI, which can be used in Video Spin or WMM. No complaints regarding quality of finished edit.
Pinnacle Video Spin: Slower and a resource hog especially on my relic system. Has a professional feel about it and has titles, transitions, sound effects and better control of soundtrack levels. Drawback is that after the 15 Day Free Trial you lose the option of some codecs without purchasing them, not expensive but a heinous crime. Supposedly outputs directly to YouTube but you cannot burn a DVD from there.
None of these downloads from CNET require Toolbar acceptance etc. and once the Trial lapses, you have very workable editors. Once you get the methods down you can make a fairly decent product combining portions of all three. Definitely more juggling and effort than a purchased standalone software package but gets the job done. Free has it's price!
, not the Luxury Windows 7 version.