Comments on: Mac Noob: Which Video Editing Software?

By: Oshawapilot

Oshawapilot — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:05:00 +0000

I’m almost PC free.

Warm fuzzy feeling, huh?

By: Mike Moon

Mike Moon — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:43:00 +0000

I haven’t got into the pictures end of things yet, but that’s coming up next.
Too bad I went down the Corel Photo road on the PC. I’ll head to Photoshop on the Mac. Another new piece of software to learn.

I switched to Final Cut Express for the video editing. It’s a couple steps above what I was using before, but I crashed-coursed my way through it. There is a world of options, but I’m getting bogged down with the simplest tasks working one time and not the next time I follow the same steps. But… it’ll come.

I was already on iTunes. I stream the vlog on there. I think I have one or two iTune subscribers. The .MP4 (Quicktime) version of video I output is compatible with iPod. Be kinda cool if someone was carrying my episodes around on his video iPod.
On that note, I won’t be outputting to WMV from now on. The picture(when clicked) will be linked to the flash version and the Quicktime one will remain, but is now using the h.264 compression.

I’ve got to look into flip4mac pro or one of the other versions. I need it for the WMV imports. But I can manage for now.

I’m almost PC free.

By: Oshawapilot

Oshawapilot — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

iPhoto is the absolute best for everyday digital photo management - once you get used to the program you’ll love it.

For picture editing, try Gimp. Free, and not quite as bloated as Photoshop.

As for iMovie, I hear that you have the (common) problem of transitions/titles/overlays screwing up your audio. I had the exact same thing and it took me a while to figure out the solution, which I’ve forgotten now. It was simple though, I’ll dig it up.

I’m by no means into heavy video editing so iMovie worked for my needs, and I suspect that once you get used to it a little more (it does have steep learning curve) it may work for yours as well. I honestly don’t know of any other “middle of the road” video editing suites for the Mac, but I can’t say I’ve ever looked either.

Other programs I’d suggest? Get Adium for all your instant messenger needs (Think Trillian but on steroids), Transmit for http://FTP... VLC is an absolute necessity for all video playback (Quicktime just doesn’t do WMV and other formats well)…and, wow, there’s allot of other proggy’s I’ve found over the last few years that are handy, I’ll post them as I come across them.

By: Bombauer

Bombauer — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 02:20:00 +0000

I've only fiddled with itunes a couple of times, and it is not the most simple or intuitive programs. But it does seem to be the most popular suite by far. I believe the movie Napoleon Dynamite was completely edited on a mac with imovie, and that was several years ago now!

I had a tough time adapting to the mac from pc, it took a little while.

For photos, iphoto is a pretty good photo manager, but I use Adobe Photoshop for any editing/tweaking of the images.