Video Editor

Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
260
Reaction score
245
Age
56
Hi all,

Interested in options for a decent video editor package (Windows). I’ve seen a few recommendations, but so far just haven’t found the right package.

Someone suggested Power Director, but the trail version is to limited to do much of anything with and the reviews are terrible. Adobe Premier is $20 per month for the student version, so not cheap as an option. Sony FinalCut gets mixed reviews and I’m not sure about Lightworks, reviews are good but I haven’t worked with it much.

I need a decent package that is easy to use, performs well on Wintel, can do 4K and provides modest features (color correction, sound, smoothing). Don’t need the overhead of a professional package, but need more then Movie Maker. Appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks
 
A month or so ago, I new sweet nothing about editing.

I downloaded Wondershare Filmora and taught myself by watching youtube videos and playing around with the program.. Very easy to use and should get you started.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Neon Euc
@bhartwell, you can find some other commonly used video editors here.
 
Thank you for the advice. I think I will give Wondershare Filmora a shot to see how well it works. Appreciate the help.
 
For video editing, I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effect. Both are great software for video editing.
 
I decided on Corel Studio X10. It’s a great editor, easy to use and feature rich. But, my Win10, I7, 8gb ram and 1tb HDD laptop can barely run it. Granted, I don’t have a dedicated graphics card, but still, it’s a beefy laptop. When working with these large 4K files, it barely works until the proxies get created, and even then it’s slow.
 
The free version of Davinci Resolve could be worth looking into.
 
If you are working with 4k video you really need an SSD.

Edit: also, I've been using PowerDirector for a number of years and it's a very good editor. Version 16 also allows you to choose the size of the shadow files.
 
Last edited:
I've been using the DaVinci Resolve 12 (Free) version and their Beta 14 version based on some Hollywood color and editing people's recommendation as they also use the hardware editing consoles made by Black Magic Designs that runs that software. I finally bit the bullet and bought their Studio 14 version, but just use it on a gamer's MSI laptop. I cheat with it and just hit Ctrl-A and it gets me close enough.
 
Most pros use Adobe Premiere Creative Cloud. It's pricey and has a bit of a learning curve, but when you're ready to move up to the best, Premiere is probably where you should be headed.
 
I decided on Corel Studio X10. It’s a great editor, easy to use and feature rich. But, my Win10, I7, 8gb ram and 1tb HDD laptop can barely run it. Granted, I don’t have a dedicated graphics card, but still, it’s a beefy laptop. When working with these large 4K files, it barely works until the proxies get created, and even then it’s slow.
To adequately edit 4K you need at least a quad core i7 and a graphic cards such as GTX1080. Most laptops have dual core i7's to minimize power consumption. 4K editing really needs a "Gamer" computer with graphics acceleration card, quad core, SSD, and then you'll have a reasonable machine to edit 4K. You will likely struggle with 4K on your laptop, long render times, rough previewing during edits, which I predict you I won't be happy. However you should be able to edit 1080 fine.

They do make gamer laptops with quad core i7 and graphics card that would suffice for 4K editing, but they cost $3000 to $4000, not cheap.
 
..... They do make gamer laptops with quad core i7 and graphics card that would suffice for 4K editing, but they cost $3000 to $4000, not cheap.

I was just looking at notebooks. I had a Sagar notebook for 6 years until it gave up and died hard. It was a workhorse for video editing and recommended by some CGI guys in Hollywood for portability and speed. It cost me about $4,000 back then, but I see they are up to $9,168.00 now. Very heavy for a notebook as it had three fans and a lot of copper cooling pipes in it.

They are really tricked out with dual NVIDIA GTX-1080 GPUs, four 2TB SSD drives in RAID, 3.7-4.7GHz processor, 4K QFHD Matte screen.

Sagar-NP9877-S-Notebook.jpg
 
I was just looking at notebooks. I had a Sagar notebook for 6 years until it gave up and died hard. It was a workhorse for video editing and recommended by some CGI guys in Hollywood for portability and speed. It cost me about $4,000 back then, but I see they are up to $9,168.00 now. Very heavy for a notebook as it had three fans and a lot of copper cooling pipes in it.

They are really tricked out with dual NVIDIA GTX-1080 GPUs, four 2TB SSD drives in RAID, 3.7-4.7GHz processor, 4K QFHD Matte screen.

View attachment 91004
Check out this 17" gaming laptop, about $4500. It look pretty capable of video editing of 4K videos. Quad core i7 with a GTX1080 GPU.
 
You don't need a gaming laptop to edit for 4K. I have a substandard i7 with 12GB ram and 1TB hard drive which runs at 2.3GHZ. does a 8 min 4K video in about 40 mins
 
  • Like
Reactions: MTO and uavflyr
I've been using the DaVinci Resolve 12 (Free) version and their Beta 14 version based on some Hollywood color and editing people's recommendation as they also use the hardware editing consoles made by Black Magic Designs that runs that software. I finally bit the bullet and bought their Studio 14 version, but just use it on a gamer's MSI laptop. I cheat with it and just hit Ctrl-A and it gets me close enough.
Can you elaborate on the Ctrl-A cheat? I use the same software and would be interested in any cheats. I liked Magix Movie Editor Pro for having a 1-click option that gets the picture edit close, is that the same sort of thing with Resolve and Ctrl-A?
 
I just bought a new XPS tower from Dell to support 4k editing. With any luck, it will do the job.

Specs include:
Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
7th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.2 GHz)
Integrated with WAVE MAXXAudio Pro
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory
16GB Intel(R) Optane(TM) memory accelerated 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
16GB (2X8GB) 2400Mhz DDR4 Memory
 
I just bought a new XPS tower from Dell to support 4k editing. With any luck, it will do the job.

Specs include:
Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
7th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.2 GHz)
Integrated with WAVE MAXXAudio Pro
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory
16GB Intel(R) Optane(TM) memory accelerated 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
16GB (2X8GB) 2400Mhz DDR4 Memory

IMHO, you will probably still need to install a SSD. They are pretty cheap right now, under $100 for something like 500-750GB. You could install it as your C drive and use the HDD as a D drive and for storage.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,355
Members
104,934
Latest member
jody.paugh@fullerandsons.