List of Movie Editors Okay for everyone out there who are movie buffs, (like I am) there are a whole mess of editing programs out there, however there are a few that stands out from each other. Some are better than others while others just are horrible. For those of you who have Macintosh computers, you guys have the edge in editing as iMovie and Final Cut Pro are some of the best editors around. Windows users, have Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, however my suggestion, Don't use it. It sucks. It is great for simple editing, but for stuff you see in the movies, it is pretty bad. I suggest using a program like Premiere. Anyhow, here are a list of programs out there; Macintosh: Final Cut Pro (BEST) iMovie PC: Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 (BEST) Windows Movie Maker 2.1 (get the newest version from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx Sony Vegas Family
iMovie is probably the most simple. (As an editor, I haven't used it, though.) Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Xpress would be good mid-range editors. However, with the price of Final Cut Pro, I wouldn't reccommend it for people who aren't in the industry. Unless you're really into this, i.e. color correction & vectorscopes, avoid AVID. (I'm currently using AVID Xpress Pro for an upper level university project.) Important feature to look for: Realtime rendering for effects. (So you don't have to wait hours to render each fade/wipe/dissolve/etc.)
LOL I just looked up AVID Xpress Pro and found it costs $1,800! Jeez! I don't want to sound like a whinging limey but most of us can't afford that kinda money for a computer let alone some software! Even the more affordable stuff suggested by Josh is way out of my league. No amount of computing power will turn you into Spielberg or Hitchcock. Windows movie maker is pretty basic but if you've got some talent like this girl then it doesn't matter what you use. One limitation of WMM is that it only saves as *.wmv and, annoyingly, the game needs *.avi to use in the movie folders. I found a freeware converter at STOIK it makes a right mess but the game will use them on the TV. (It turned a 3.5MB .wmv into a 26.0MB avi!!! (Luckily I am not short of gigabytes of disc space!) In spite of their huge size the STOIK avi's are useless for anything other than showing on sim's TV's ... heck the defects show up on the plasma set! But its free and I got to make my own movies for the game. Just my opinion.
If you need something basic, WMM is great. The expensive editing software is meant for people who want to do multiple layers of video and/or audio. It also lets you do fancy things like blue/green screens and special effects. Not something most hobbyists want to deal with. Unless you're really really into this, a basic (and cheap!) editor will do just fine. (Btw, when editing short video clips to email or post online, I use WMM! )
So, do you end up with an .AVI, or just the windows proprietory extension? (People seem to have trouble with this and only the .avi's work when put into TS2.)
I haven't put movies into TS2, so I've just always used .WMV files. However, I do know that there are WMV to AVI converters out there. Some free ones too. Try searching at cnet.com (but watch out for spyware!)
See my message 2 or 3 post up this thread. Stoik is more than adequate for converting .wmv to .avi for use in the game ... so long as you have plenty of disc space and ram.
My dad has an editing program by Nero. Looked really simple. I didn't know Nero made video editing software.
