NLE software for amateur documentary?

P

peterandersen

New member
Hi-- I'm an amateur shooting a 60-90 minute documentary which will include several dozen interviews, plenty of b-roll, and a little music. Obviously I don't need Final Cut Pro for this. Can anyone recommend a scaled-down editing program, ideally for Windows as opposed to Mac?

Thank you!

Pete Andersen
 
Premiere Pro is fairly easy to learn. If you don't need any advanced features, don't use them. Then down the road if you need more features, they'll be right there.
 
I use SONY Vegas Pro for my work, but have helped out many users with Vegas Studio 10 and 11. For about $90 you get everything to edit, export and author DVDs.
 
I used Premiere Elements, then Vegas Pro, and now Premiere Pro. Premiere Elements and Vegas Studio is pretty much the same price. My advice would be Premiere if you ever plan on using Photoshop or After Effects, that will get you familiar with the interface. If not, Vegas is also a pretty good solution. And does very good sound. In my case, I'm a slow learner, I bought books for all of them. Adobe's "Classroom in a book" series will get you up to speed in any of their programs. For Vegas I got the Spotted Eagle book, but the Fith Edition of "Digital Video & Audio Production" by Rebholz and Bryant was much better to start out with.

Amazon has all of these books, and there may be newer revisions to all of them.

At the Vegas Studio/Premiere Elements level there isn't much difference between these programs. Either one will work just fine. I don't know if they still will let you download trial versions. If they do, take advantage of it.
 
Hi Pete,

I used Corel VideoStudio before I bought Edius. Now I use Corel to help out others (friends, neighbours). I explain how it works and tell them that if they understand this one, they'll easily be able to learn other programs in the same catagory (like Vegas Movie Studio, the Pinnacle stuff, Elements, and so forth). What you are planning to produce, sounds like many of the things I've made with Corel. Both with/for the friends/neighbours as for my own (more ambitious) things.

So I wouldn't worry and just look around which one looks the most accesable to you and then do the trail version first. Nothing is lost if you buy the program later on.

Good luck!

Groetjes,
Jasper
 
+1 for Vegas. I've used FCP and Adobe Premiere and Vegas was by far the most fun to edit with.
 
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