What type of Non linear Editing is out there

[tuco]

Hee hee first post :)

Anyways, I know of one non linear editing program for linux, forgot the name, but are there any non linear editing programs for windows? Are most of them pricey as well?

[RadicalEd]

In my experience the most used NLE's for each platform are;
Windows - Premiere
Linux - Cinerella
Mac - Final Cut Pro or Premiere (FCP is supposedly miles better, yes goodness is measured in miles, but it's also really expensive)

I'm thinking of installing Linux on a partition somewhere just for editing, since Cinerella seems a lot sexier than Premiere what with its no hundredth place fractional framerate support (you can't edit in 23.976fps.. just 23.98 :| )

[DDogg]

Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video, especially with the 3.0 and new 4.0 versions, is blurring the line between Studio editing programs and those available to the average Joe and Prosumer.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/vegasfamily.asp

[nFury8]

And here's (http://www.corporatemedianews.com/2002/01_jan/reviews/cw_nle_sw_roundup2.htm/) a roundup of some NLE softwares.

I recently switched to Vegas Video, used to do NLE on Premiere. I think I'm starting to like Vegas Video more.:)

[Edit] Didn't notice how long this thread on NLE's been up, but I think it's pretty cool.:)

[atreides93]

I typicall use Adobe Premiere. It took me a while to figure it out and learn how to use it well. so you like this Vegas software better?? Maybe i'll give it a shot, see if its worth it. I do like the idea of that vegas +dvd software.

[auenf]

at work i use Premiere 6.x hooked up to a Matrox Digisuite, the realtime rendering is very nice, pity it doesnt do it for gradient wipes tho.

Enf...

[FishB8]

For Linux users, you may want to keep an eye on Kdenlive (http://www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/kdenlive.html) It's not really ready for use yet, but it looks like it may turn out to be a nice NLE.

[DDogg]

atreides93, if you use Premier and try Vegas 4 you will be astounded with the ease of Pans and Crops. Vegas uses key frames, so you could do a pan, crop, 360 spin then zoom all with a few strokes. They have some damn powerful stuff in Vegas and it has a proper Windows interface!

[reelthing03]

I've got to give my shout out to Avid's Xpress DV. I have never used Vegas, but i have used Premier and Xpress is way above it. It gives realtime previews of most effects, and gives very powerful real time color correction. It virtually eliminates the need for rendering (except for mainly time-stretch effects). The interface is somewhat nonstandard and takes some getting used to, but it is highly customizeable and once you are used to it you can work very efficently. Xpress is probably the closest you can get to professional without specialied hardware. It also, unfortunately, has a professional price out of the reach for most. Take a look at http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/

B

PS. After I wrote this I took a good look at Vegas Video and the claims at least aren't much different from what xpress does.

[DDogg]

reelthing03, Sonic Foundry has a good demo for Vegas (big download, tho). If you have time it would be interesting to hear an Avid users opinion.

[SiliconSoul]

i use macs at school, imovie is the best for simple editing but final cut pro is great if you need a full blown NLE.
for PC which i use at home, ive tried priemere and ulead studio and Vegas. Vegas is by far the easiest and most powerful.

[reelthing03]

I downloaded the demo of Vegas and I am currently in the process of experimenting with it. It will probably take me a few days but I will be back with comments.

[LB]

I've used a number of them and can share some input. Note though, I deal mostly with FX and overlaying onto video. If you are only interested in joining clips then this review really isn't for you.

1. Adobe After Effects
- VERY Fast in handling large files with multiple effects. I mean this in a overal use sort of way. You can keep adding effects and overlays and the junk doesn't slow down.
- Horrible text overlay interface. Unless you want to shell out $400 for Boris Graffiti (a Text plugin for AE) then forget AE as a text overlay program. It can overlay text but the text generation system is so limited. What you will be forced to resort to most likely is to create your text in Illustrator and import it in. Downside is that you can't easily see the text on the video until after you have already created it. That's a major downside for myself.
- Tons of plugins. There have been so many quality FX plugins developed and in-development for this that it's not even funny. Lotta good stuff to play with here.
- Kinda 3d. Its 3d features were part of an upgrade to this product. They work well but since they were not built with it initially, there is a ton of room for improvement. I believe it's all layer based so it's not true 3d.

2. Ulead (Forget the rest of the name)
- I didn't like this program at all since if my memory serves me right it decided to install it's own mpeg2 codecs and render my SVCD playing capability in-functional.
- Also, again if this is the product I am thinking of, it takes FOREVER because it has to re-render or do some kind of crap to your source upon importing. A 400mb file could take 30 minutes JUST TO IMPORT. So, for these two reasons that was a A+ reason to un-install and DELETE ulead. hah

3. Vegas Video 4.0
- WOAH. This sucker is soooo freaking fast. Like, wicked fast. Downside is this is like trying to learn RPN (remember the HP48?). Hard as heck to learn to use but I think (obviously I didn't spend a good deal of time with it) once one becomes proficient with it, you can fly.
- But, I found this to be really for joining clips and what not. There is a nice text generation program but the overlaying just downright sucks. Unless I totally didn't understand how to do it correctly, it's a real pain in the arse to overlay stuff.
- So, I dunno. Unlike other NLE programs, you WILL be required to go through the manual and learn this thing step by step. But, if you are looking for a good fx and overlay program, this isn't it imho.

4. COMBUSTION
- WOW. If you got the $, pick this one up. Hands down the best program I've ever used for NLE. A+ in all respects. Think of it as the "son" in the family because it is based upon it's father, Inferno.... oooo. heh. Inferno, flint, flame, etc are million, yeah, they litterally cost a million, dollar programs which most studios used. They did the majority of the fX in the latest spiderman movie. Very tight stuff. So, if you want a better analogy. Think of Inferno as the Camaro SS and Combustion as a stock Camaro V8 - a lot of $$. (I think the current price is 900$).
- Anyway. Their time line kicks butt. Great interface. Takes some getting used to but after that I really appreaciate all that is there.
- PARTICLE EFFECTS!!! Wow. If you don't know what these are then you are really missing out. I don't know how to make them, but I know how to use them. Haha. Imagine a particle, it could be any type of small picture (jpg, gif, etc) of say a small ball, a snowflake, leaf, etc and then you apply killer effects to it and each effect is interchangeable with each picture. There are tons of great places to download hundreds of effects FREE. An example of this in use is making it snow and then outlining some stuff on your video as a boundary and the snow will hit it and roll off or accumulate. You can edit any type of feature for each effect. Very wild.
- TEXT! In my book it's the 2nd best NLE Text system. Has all the great features you would want out of a text system. Face, shadow, outline. Very easy to change and preview fonts, do color / gradient changes, etc. My only *WISH* is that they would [1] implement 3D shapes or at least beveled features (something like what inscriber has); and [2] have an option for multiple outlines. Sometimes you want multilayered outlines over the face. Oh well, I can dream right?
- Kinda fast. You WANT your source to be huffy. This goes without saying for ALL NLE programs as scrolling through your movie requires decompression, taking up memory and CPU power in an already memory driven program. So, deal with huffy and you're set. That said, this program is capped at dealing with 2gb files (NOTE: AE is not capped), but I wouldn't recommend using 2gb files anyway. Once you start adding a lot of fX, scrolling through your project WILL slow down. More fX = slower, obviously. I have found handling ~3mins of Huffy material is pretty darn fast on my system. Going more than that with an excess of 4+ overlays/fx results in a pretty slow scroll through. Although, AE does not have this problem. I have easily added 10+ overlays in a 2gb file and didn't notice any slowdown. Vegas is even faster. So it depends on what you want. Good text and particle capabilities, or a really fast project.
- Finally, AE COMPATIBLE PLUGINS!!! Wow. This is the big one. Combustion can use 98% of ALL AE compatible plugins. Pretty sweet deal. No new versions to download, just install in your plugin directory for combustion and off you go. I'm thinking of buying Graffiti in the hopes that it will also be 100% functional in combustion. I've found though that 50% of the VERY complex plugins work, hence the 98% compatibility. Regular plugins like Boris FX, etc work fine though.

5. Boris Red
- Being brief since my fingers are tired, Boris has the potential to be decent. I used it only on WinXP but noticed it crashing randomly every 30 minutes. So, I'm not sure what's up with that. I did use it quite a bit though since it's a decent program.
- The TEXT features are really superb. It can do everything combustion can do + the two *WISHES* I would like combustion to do. Basically it's all the perks of Boris Graffiti built into this. Very nice.
- My only gripe is the timeline. It's VERY difficult to mark stuff and zoom in and just generally navigate the timeline. I found that I could not always zoom out, it was difficult, etc. Also, the little bubbles it creates for a "key" become quite cumbersome and hard to differentiate between once you get a load of them placed. So that really bites.
- Importing plugins. I think this program can also import plugins from AE but have yet to give that a whirl.





Anyway, there's my input if you are looking to do some fX and overlaying on video. I recommend combustion since these programs are all quite expensive and picking the wrong one could be a pain. A few of these programs have demos which I've used and which were the basis for some of these reviews.

Side note though, if you are looking for a clip joining program with some basic transitions to create say, a home movie of the family, look towards adobe premiere and/or vegas video.


[ Please disregard any of the 100+ spelling errors found throughout this document. :D ]

[smok3]

other editors that are not that generic? (what would you suggest?) /i would need a really fast and simple cut only thingy with ability to add multiple layers of audio of course so i get the video-edl and export the audio tracks..., if you ever used lightworks offline editor you know what iam talking about.../

well if you are a pro nle editor it is really hard to use a 'generic' app like premiere imho, i did few test with premiere for offline type of work, but it is manly pain in the ass...
(mjpeg 1/2 res material with timecodes burned in)

for composing;
i like after fx, but i dont know where did you get the 'they are fast' ? :)

for audio layering;
vegas seems cute.

to conclude: premier and after fx: i dont like apps that would take 7 monitors to open all the crap there is needed. (sometimes i wonder if photoshop is a product of some other company)

edit: oh, about combustion; iam a smoke* user and i really dont want to stare at that irix look in windows, i mean, you can do some better particles with some 3d app.
edit: oh, and thumbs up for the nle section as well :D

[theReal]

Just wanted to add: Ulead Media Studio 6.5 is fast - for editing DV video, it doesn't re-render anything at all. I've also imported avi files from other sources and it never took more than maybe 2 seconds to import. It does install its own mpeg2 DShow codecs, but you can uninstall them with regsvr32 /u

I like Adobe Premiere better, because it offers some neat functions that are missing in Ulead (to name one: the "razor at edit line" command).

btw. many commercial video producers are actually using Adobe Premiere and not the extremely expensive AVID systems.
You can do really professional videos with 3D Studio Max and Adobe Premiere (I've seen some commercial videos recently). There's no need for extremely expensive AVID equipment.

[LB]

Well I was never a big Avid fan. I would compare avid to the WinXP interface. ;p It's too fancy for me. I did notice it installed the codecs for it which rendered my SVCD playing capability useless. ;( Oh well.

LB

[nFury8]

originally posted by atreides93

I typicall use Adobe Premiere. It took me a while to figure it out and learn how to use it well. so you like this Vegas software better?? Maybe i'll give it a shot, see if its worth it. I do like the idea of that vegas +dvd software.

One of the neat features of Vegas that made me switch from Premiere is the scene-change detection during capturing. It saves me a lot of pain in organizing clips. I previously used Scenalyzer Live just for this feature, then do the editing in Premiere. But now that Vegas is capable of this, I just do it under one roof. Although I am intrigued by its compositing FX, which is obviously still not on par with After Effects, but I think its got some convincing results to a certain degree. Im not really familiar yet with its overlaying/compositing features. Maybe somebody here is more knowledgable on this.

regards

[SiliconSoul]

you know if premiere did the clip splits like vegas i think it would be a lot nicer. but i did not like how vegas deal with the whole zoom in and out stuff... when u have long clips or many that you are joining it is a little hard to deal with. premiere is best in that respect

[reelthing03]

I posted my promised comparison of Xpress DV and Avid. I just created a new post since it seemed to be out of the scope of this one and also to create (the illusion i guess) of more trafic in this excelent forum.

B

[nFury8]

originally posted by SiliconSoul

but i did not like how vegas deal with the whole zoom in and out stuff... when u have long clips or many that you are joining it is a little hard to deal with. premiere is best in that respect
You mean the timeline zooming control? Actually I find Vegas more convenient here. I just scroll my mouse wheel if I need to zoom in or out. But to each his own :).

[SiliconSoul]

hmm... ill have to try this... but for me vegas still drops too many frames... premiere seems more stable. but its also the camera i have ZR30MC. my friends sony does not drop any frames at all on my machine.

[smok3]

Originally posted by nFury8
...I previously used Scenalyzer Live just for this feature, then do the editing in Premiere. But now that Vegas is capable of this... can this thingy process allready captured avi's and is there a way to deal with timecode somehow?

[nFury8]

originally posted by smok3

can this thingy process allready captured avi's and is there a way to deal with timecode somehow?
Are you referring to editing AVI's in Vegas? Yes, you can edit your captured AVI clips just like in Premiere, or any other NLE's out there. I'm afraid I don't quite get you about the timecode stuff.

[smok3]

tnx for replay,
sorry for not being clear, i was asking about scenalyzer?

and 2nd, timecodes:
what i do is grab clips with burned in timecodes (in picture) and add them manualy in premiere when i do offline editing (works fine for shorter projects)..., i guess that is not something scenalyzer could solve anyway so nm.

[nFury8]

:) Oh okay. You're right, Scenalyzer Live is only useful for capturing. It's not meant for editing.

[Arky]

Originally posted by LB
I've used a number of them and can share some input. Note though, I deal mostly with FX and overlaying onto video. If you are only interested in joining clips then this review really isn't for you.

1. Adobe After Effects
- VERY Fast in handling large files with multiple effects. I mean this in a overal use sort of way. You can keep adding effects and overlays and the junk doesn't slow down.
- Horrible text overlay interface. Unless you want to shell out $400 for Boris Graffiti (a Text plugin for AE) then forget AE as a text overlay program. It can overlay text but the text generation system is so limited. What you will be forced to resort to most likely is to create your text in Illustrator and import it in. Downside is that you can't easily see the text on the video until after you have already created it. That's a major downside for myself.
- Tons of plugins. There have been so many quality FX plugins developed and in-development for this that it's not even funny. Lotta good stuff to play with here.
- Kinda 3d. Its 3d features were part of an upgrade to this product. They work well but since they were not built with it initially, there is a ton of room for improvement. I believe it's all layer based so it's not true 3d.

2. Ulead (Forget the rest of the name)
- I didn't like this program at all since if my memory serves me right it decided to install it's own mpeg2 codecs and render my SVCD playing capability in-functional.
- Also, again if this is the product I am thinking of, it takes FOREVER because it has to re-render or do some kind of crap to your source upon importing. A 400mb file could take 30 minutes JUST TO IMPORT. So, for these two reasons that was a A+ reason to un-install and DELETE ulead. hah

3. Vegas Video 4.0
- WOAH. This sucker is soooo freaking fast. Like, wicked fast. Downside is this is like trying to learn RPN (remember the HP48?). Hard as heck to learn to use but I think (obviously I didn't spend a good deal of time with it) once one becomes proficient with it, you can fly.
- But, I found this to be really for joining clips and what not. There is a nice text generation program but the overlaying just downright sucks. Unless I totally didn't understand how to do it correctly, it's a real pain in the arse to overlay stuff.
- So, I dunno. Unlike other NLE programs, you WILL be required to go through the manual and learn this thing step by step. But, if you are looking for a good fx and overlay program, this isn't it imho.

4. COMBUSTION
- WOW. If you got the $, pick this one up. Hands down the best program I've ever used for NLE. A+ in all respects. Think of it as the "son" in the family because it is based upon it's father, Inferno.... oooo. heh. Inferno, flint, flame, etc are million, yeah, they litterally cost a million, dollar programs which most studios used. They did the majority of the fX in the latest spiderman movie. Very tight stuff. So, if you want a better analogy. Think of Inferno as the Camaro SS and Combustion as a stock Camaro V8 - a lot of $$. (I think the current price is 900$).
- Anyway. Their time line kicks butt. Great interface. Takes some getting used to but after that I really appreaciate all that is there.
- PARTICLE EFFECTS!!! Wow. If you don't know what these are then you are really missing out. I don't know how to make them, but I know how to use them. Haha. Imagine a particle, it could be any type of small picture (jpg, gif, etc) of say a small ball, a snowflake, leaf, etc and then you apply killer effects to it and each effect is interchangeable with each picture. There are tons of great places to download hundreds of effects FREE. An example of this in use is making it snow and then outlining some stuff on your video as a boundary and the snow will hit it and roll off or accumulate. You can edit any type of feature for each effect. Very wild.
- TEXT! In my book it's the 2nd best NLE Text system. Has all the great features you would want out of a text system. Face, shadow, outline. Very easy to change and preview fonts, do color / gradient changes, etc. My only *WISH* is that they would [1] implement 3D shapes or at least beveled features (something like what inscriber has); and [2] have an option for multiple outlines. Sometimes you want multilayered outlines over the face. Oh well, I can dream right?
- Kinda fast. You WANT your source to be huffy. This goes without saying for ALL NLE programs as scrolling through your movie requires decompression, taking up memory and CPU power in an already memory driven program. So, deal with huffy and you're set. That said, this program is capped at dealing with 2gb files (NOTE: AE is not capped), but I wouldn't recommend using 2gb files anyway. Once you start adding a lot of fX, scrolling through your project WILL slow down. More fX = slower, obviously. I have found handling ~3mins of Huffy material is pretty darn fast on my system. Going more than that with an excess of 4+ overlays/fx results in a pretty slow scroll through. Although, AE does not have this problem. I have easily added 10+ overlays in a 2gb file and didn't notice any slowdown. Vegas is even faster. So it depends on what you want. Good text and particle capabilities, or a really fast project.
- Finally, AE COMPATIBLE PLUGINS!!! Wow. This is the big one. Combustion can use 98% of ALL AE compatible plugins. Pretty sweet deal. No new versions to download, just install in your plugin directory for combustion and off you go. I'm thinking of buying Graffiti in the hopes that it will also be 100% functional in combustion. I've found though that 50% of the VERY complex plugins work, hence the 98% compatibility. Regular plugins like Boris FX, etc work fine though.

5. Boris Red
- Being brief since my fingers are tired, Boris has the potential to be decent. I used it only on WinXP but noticed it crashing randomly every 30 minutes. So, I'm not sure what's up with that. I did use it quite a bit though since it's a decent program.
- The TEXT features are really superb. It can do everything combustion can do + the two *WISHES* I would like combustion to do. Basically it's all the perks of Boris Graffiti built into this. Very nice.
- My only gripe is the timeline. It's VERY difficult to mark stuff and zoom in and just generally navigate the timeline. I found that I could not always zoom out, it was difficult, etc. Also, the little bubbles it creates for a "key" become quite cumbersome and hard to differentiate between once you get a load of them placed. So that really bites.
- Importing plugins. I think this program can also import plugins from AE but have yet to give that a whirl.





Anyway, there's my input if you are looking to do some fX and overlaying on video. I recommend combustion since these programs are all quite expensive and picking the wrong one could be a pain. A few of these programs have demos which I've used and which were the basis for some of these reviews.

Side note though, if you are looking for a clip joining program with some basic transitions to create say, a home movie of the family, look towards adobe premiere and/or vegas video.




Interesting post, LB - I enjoyed reading it :)

Yes, Boris RED will accept most AE plugz, although many people swear it is pig-slow with them.

I don't work on a professional basis with video appz, so I am limited with how much throughput I get with compositing appz. I must say, though, that I originally found AE a nightmare to use, but I rather enjoy it now. I still wouldn't call it 'user-friendly' though. I've also had a great deal of fun with Boris RED, which isn't really easier than AE (although Artel Soft claim it is). It's just different, albeit with more presets to speed things up.

As a side note, if you've never used any of
The Foundry's (http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/ae.html) plugz for AE, you really owe it to yourself to try some. They're fantastic. Fast and superb quality.

I must say I am genuinely surprised that I appear to be virtually the only person on the whole Doom9 board that uses Pinnacle Edition for my NLEditing. This is remarkable, because it's a great program and for anyone who needs to use other compositing appz, it offers an 'X-send' function (works with any Quicktime-based app, including AE, Commotion etc. - bizarrely, it even works with Cinemacraft Encoder cos I've tried it!) and also a 'Fuse' function, both of which are an absolute boon. As a short-to-medium-form miniDV/DVcam NLE, the image quality of Edition is unsurpassed (yes, it is equalled by Avid DVXpres, but it ain't beaten). Also, there are some high-quality (although admittedly limited) integrated 2-D and 3-D compositing/effects applets. Just try a 3d perspective PIP, with, perhaps, a 360degree rotation, and a scrolling title and you'll begin to appreciate what I mean about the image quality - the subpixel rendered output is really gorgeous and puts the likes of Premiere and Media Studio Pro to shame. Making such compositions all the more easy, is the professional style 'nesting' capability, which Avid users will be familiar with. Actually, if anyone is used to Avid, but can't aford it for themselves, then Edition is probably the closest thing to it for far less money.

Edition is not quite as efficiently coded as Avid Xpress, but it's very close, and the speedy rendering is done in the background, while you work. Finally, it's completely multithreaded, like SpeedRazor etc, and you really notice this when you're working with it.

As with the others, there is a downloadable demo available, although you would be much better off waiting for a Version5 demo to be made available, since there are dramatic Rendering and Realtime-Preview improvements in the latest (v.5) release. It is the same interface as version 4.5, but is a different beast behind the scenes, since v.5 leverages GPU processing power in addition to the CPU. Very cool, epsecially if you are going to use it with RED3.0, which also now adopts a similar GPU-leveraging architecture.


Arky ;o)