Are there any decent free NLEs besides these?

[FredThompson]

ABC VideoRoll

Dead product and no way to get a registration key so it dies quickly.

AIST Movie Explorer

Dead. Can't seem to find it.

AIST MovieXone
http://www.aistinc.com/products/moviexone.asp

Little documentation. Download is currently disabled (I have version 4.0 build 8327, the German site reports there is a 4.5 version) Supposed to be some free transitions but you have to register (broken). How do plug-ins work? Horrible purple color scheme though. Bleech! Wish it could be changed to brushed metal.

:confused:Avid Free DV:confused:
http://www.avid.com/forms/info.asp?iTrackingID=7682

Avid will be releasing Free DV sometime in mid-2003 for both PC and Mac. Sign up for an email notification when it is available.

:)Axogon Composer 0.93.1:)
http://www.5star-shareware.com/Util...n-composer.html

This is the "before" version of MainConcept's MainVision program. There's also quite a following among the guys who do all those Lego movies.

:)CyberLink PowerDirector 1.1:)
review: http://www.consumerdvreviews.com/editing/powerdirector/default.asp
CyberLink PowerProducer 1.0 VE (VCD Only)

For a limited time in April (?) 2003 CyberLink gave these away free on their website. Copies may be floating around the web. They're fairly large (12M and 22M) and required a registration number. The numbers were the same for everyone.

PowerDirector 1.1 CD-Key Number: PR99523832847729
PowerProducer 1.0 VE CD-Key Number: PV87739124355277

(email me before you get in a tizzy, these are no longer commercial and were given away as demos of the current full versions. I'll remove the serial numbers if it's really a problem.)

DDClip Free

Free version won't work on Win2K with >2G available space in the install partition. Author won't update it. WTF?!?! That's about as useless as the free Pro Tools 5.01 that won't run on Win2K.

Digital Origin freeDV
http://www.dvchannel.com/ (free registration)

Dead product. 3 minute limit.

:)Heroine Warrior Cinelerra:)
http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Linux-only unless someone cares to get into the source and make a Windows version (boy, wouldn't THAT be nice, especially if they included full VST, DX, AviSynth, VirtualDub, Premiere, and After Effects plug-in support.)

(Is there a free way to run Linux in a window? That might be a solution.)

pure motion EditStudio
http://www.puremotion.com/editstudio/index.htm

Some of the British magazines have included a complete, older version on their CD. We don't get those here (I'm in North Carolina) and can't find a way to download. Does anyone have a good URL for this?

Windows Movie Maker 2
http://microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/

Appears to only be for Windows XP.

:)Zwei-Stein Video Editor:)
http://www.thugsatbay.com/zweistein/

I've sent email a number of times but never get a response. Nice program but without source or a plug-in architecture there's no way to integrate it with AviSynth/VirtualDub.


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Basically, I'm looking for a free NLE that will (preferably) support the DebugMode PluginPac FrameServer (http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/frameserver.php)

The best options right now seem to be Axogon Composer, CyberLink PowerDirector 1.1 (if you can find it) and Zwei-Stein. Avid Free DV looks promising, too.

There's also a "shootout" between some of the leading PC NLE's:
http://www.dvline.com/cfwebstore/tour/about.htm

Really wish the authors of Zwei-Stein would release the source...

[Ookami]

Nice list :) . I would vote for making this one sticky.

[DDogg]

Fred, what OS are you using and what is the basic overview of the project you wish to do? Although I will take a lot of heat for saying so, if you have XP, and unless you need advanced features like panning, key-framing, compositing, etc., the newest Windows Movie Maker2 is really quite excellent and extremely under appreciated for basic and some intermediate editing work.

[FredThompson]

I'm using Win2K Pro. Tried XP and didn't like the cutsieness of the interface. Some things are harder to do with it, search is a good example. Probably would have stayed with it if the interface could have been made to look like Win98.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about Movie Maker. I'll add that to the list.

I need the ability to mask during composite. Some of the NTSC video I've shot in Europe has a background pulsing from the 50 Hz lights and my NTSC camera. Fine, so that gets handled with a temporal filter. Well, that screws up some of the foreground detail. THe only workable solution I've found is to process the same stream twice then combine by masking.

Other than that, I just realized NLE aps are few and far between unless you want to drop a load of cash. Last night I found Sonic Foundry has released a reduced-feature Vegas, so that's cool. Really wish Avid would hurry upa nd release Free DV.

[mrbass]

I only run win2k too.

"...Avid Free DV is planned to support both Macintosh OS X and Windows XP platforms."

I remember Avid stating the reason the newer versions will no longer run on anything but WinXP but it definitely will be WinXP only so that's a no go for me.

[FredThompson]

Dunno. The only thing XP has is a little more DRM. XP-only doesn't make sense because XP hardly changed the skeleton, it was mainly eye-candy and a few configuration helps.

http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2003/030107_avidfreedv_prod.html

The DigiTools thing he talks about is win9x only. Why in the world would you brag about something for an OS that hasn't had official support for months?