Since we are a tech crowd, I thought we could help each other out with any tech issues we need help with.
I’m looking for an easy way to do some video editing. I have Adobe Premiere but it seems like there are apps out there that are easier for basic edits…just not sure what. And YouTube’s features also look useful but I haven’t played with them.
In my experience, it is worth learning to use a professional video editor. Basic software is not much easier to use and is much more limited. Try to find a tutorial for the basic functions of Premiere, since you have that particular software (I use final cut myself).
I’m trying one out now (not right this moment) and it’s pretty easy but the performance is abysmal even on a really powerful desktop. I can’t really recommend it because of the performance issues but I’ll try to remember to link it tonight in case anyone doesn’t mind waiting minutes every time they try to make a small change to a video.
Ignoring the performance issues, it reminds me of iMovie on Mac with the advantage that you don’t have to painstakingly load clips into the master library in order to use it.
I’m wondering now if the fix for the performance issue is to remove the compression before opening the video. I’ll report back when I remember to test it out. 
I feel like there are all these kids on YouTube whose videos are better than mine. They must be using some kind of app. Premiere is great but I’m just doing basic edits.
“Some kind of app”… on the iPhone or iPad, there is imovie and it works surprisingly well.
Speaking of PCs and video, I’m running a couple of old Vista partitions (yeah, I know) that are starting to get pretty sketchy, and I figure it’s past time to upgrade the worst one to 7, but I seem to recall some kind of snag with that (I’ve run a 7 partition before) that was a dealbreaker for me…
One of the main uses for my box is playing video, and call me fussy, but I can’t abide goddamn frame tearing. I dimly recall the epic mission it took to address this issue, where it took me ages to find out I required a bit of software from nVidia called Pureview in order to synch the frame rate with my refresh rate… As if somehow that shouldn’t be a standard fucking part of the driver suite (and AFAIK, there’s no equivalent available for ATI!)…
Anyway, it was a touch and go palaver to get the bloody thing actually working (it only works on the buggiest partition, which will be the first to go), and if I remember right, I couldn’t get it happening on the 7 partition I was running at the time, which is the very reason I’m stuck on Vista, I think.
If anyone knows WTF I’m talking about, is there a way to get Purevideo running on 7?
I use Premiere but I hear iMovie is the one everyone else uses.
Premiere is worth it if you stick with it through the first few hours. It’s a pain in the ass to get started with but once you have a standard template project with your media and project bins organised how you like, scrubbing through footage and selecting clips to insert into the timeline becomes a more pleasurable, creative process.
I got very used to typing “how do I [do this thing!]” into google. In fact, I think that’s mostly how I learned, searching after bumping into a problem, apart from the occasional tutorial.
The razor and slip/slide tools (IMO) are the most important to familiarise yourself with, beyond that:
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/premiere-pro/tutorials.html
https://library.creativecow.net/tutorials/adobepremierebasics
I also reccomend Lynda but it’s pay to play so…
https://www.lynda.com/Premiere-Pro-training-tutorials/287-0.html
…maybe find a ‘friend’ that already has them?
If you stick with Adobe you can have a better time flicking between Premiere and After Effects. That’s when the real fun starts.
OK, aside from Premier, the other one everyone talks about is Blackmagic design, Da Vinci Resolve Lite. It’s a free version of an industry tool which costs $30,000. I haven’t used it but people say it’s better than Premiere.
Having said all that, iMovie is way more friendly and if you get an old enough version you can mess around with the P frames and make glitched out videos:
Good luck on your journey!
*thinks about tearing
*tears up
iMovie is fine for the basic stuff if you have a Mac or an iPad. Anything more than that is worth learning Premiere.
Now that I’m back at a computer, the app was OpenShot. It performs a bit better if you tell it to increase its RAM cache to 500MB. I wasn’t able to find a way to uncompress my test videos. I know there’s a way to do it but I don’t want to drag my files over to my Windows computer and deal with Avidemux today.
I did some research during lunch. YouTubers are saying on the free end (for Windows), Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker isn’t bad (I’ve had bad experiences with it in previous versions but they’re saying it got better at some point). I looked at some less expensive options but I didn’t see anything in the ~$100 range that looked better than Corel VideoStudio. I’ve got a copy of that somewhere. I bought it back when I didn’t have a good enough computer to really make use of it but it did what I needed it to even though I was doing something kind of complicated with it.
The other thing in that price range is Premiere Elements but since you already have Premiere I’m not sure it’s a good choice.
We have a Lynda work account. Will investigate.
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