Video Editing Review-EDLD 5363

After reading the reviews of many popular video editing programs at http://www.isoftwarereviews.com/free-video-editing-software-programs/, I decided for my first evaluation to go with Windows Movie Maker-it was largely the most popular one, and it was already on my computer. I uploaded my PhotoStory movie easily and started to experiment. I liked how you just drag the video to the storyboard to begin editing. This made it easy, and you can see what you have done and are doing throughout the entire process. The “movie tasks” board on the left hand side of the screen was convenient for someone like me who is a novice. It gives you all the main basic options that Movie Maker performs, and if you click on any one of them, it will give you step by step directions for each task. I felt it was easy to cut videos, create effects, make transitions and create titles especially with this handy help feature. As you import videos needed for your final video, you can put them in any order, and if you need to move them around all you need to do is click and drag. If you need to edit a frame, you can do so by clicking on “Show timeline”. This is a simple way to trim individual frames. A trick I learned when saving is to first just click on the regular save, that way if you need to come back to the project you can at any time. Then you will need to save as, to create a video file that is easy to upload to a video hosting site such as Vimeo or YouTube. Many reviews mentioned that Windows Movie Maker would sometimes it will “crash and freeze” (although I never experienced this) and that many other editing programs are more advanced have more options. This was not a problem for me though, as I am new to video editing.
My next review was on Avidemux, based on the website that I mentioned above, http://www.isoftwarereviews.com/free-video-editing-software-programs/. Avidemux was recommended second after Windows Movie Maker. Installing it went smoothly. Most reviews said that Avidemux was more advanced that Windows Movie maker , but even if you were new to video editing, you would be fine. The first time I opened my video, there was a green screen, but I could hear the audio. This was my PhotoStory video that I had easily edited with Windows Move Maker. I went to find help and the help button on Avidemux did not provide much assistance, so I headed to Google. I realized that my movie was not compatible, although it was a WMV file. So then I tried a video that I had from my social studies curriculum, and that one loaded up without error. I began experimenting-I took off sound, with out a hitch, but then I couldn’t put it back on. So I closed the program and restarted it up. This program is good for tweaking smaller things such as resizing the video, combining videos, and adding effects. You can join videos together, change the audio completely with a click of a button, and can extract clips as well.
As I mentioned earlier, the “Help” button was not extremely beneficial, as it is with Windows Movie Maker. Most of my help came from online, especially the website http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/linux/Avidemux-Review-24667.shtml. I think that for new learners as myself, an important feature with a video editing program is providing sufficient help. In the future, I will use Windows Movie Maker, because of its ease and basic functions. I can see though that if I become more proficient, then something with a higher quality like Avidemux could potentially fit my needs better. Before this class, I have never edited a video before and I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to do it and it would overwhelm me. I did feel overwhelmed using Avidemux, but felt extremely comfortable using Windows Movie Maker. I even showed Movie Maker to a few of my third grade student and they played around with it with ease. It is easy to undo work if you make a mistake, and that is the most important piece to me.