Q&A: I need recommendations for good free video editing software for basic editing of 3 camcorders?

Question by redballoon: I need recommendations for good free video editing software for basic editing of 3 camcorders?
I have 3 Canon Optura 50 camcorders and a Sony Vaio PC with 1G of RAM and a 400 Hard Drive – I am going to be shooting live performance art with three cameras – one straight on – a second at another angle and the third from wherever is convieneint – I would then like to be able to just edit the 3 videos into one – the performances would all range from 3 to 5 to probably no more than 10 or 15 minutes so It is not like I am trying to do an entire movie or anything (if that matters) – just very basic editing of 3 camcorders to make one final version to later put up on a website – I am very new to this stuff so I apologize if I seem like an idiot here-

Best answer:

Answer by olin1963
I applaud your ambition. This will be a labor intensive task I assure you, but it should be a lot of fun too.

You will not find software for free that will allow live mixing of multiple video sources. That is high-dollar stuff. But you can find cheap software that will allow you to edit any number of DV clips together to give the illusion of live switching.

I would recommend that you obtain a copy of Pinnacle Studio 9 to do this project. It is easy to learn, fairly versatile, and does not use a lot of computing power. You can find these on eBay for about $ 30 to $ 40. I do not recommend any other versions of Studio for your setup.

It will be important to match the white balance of the three camcorders as much as possible. You could do this in either the manual white balance mode, or if you are lucky the preset white balance modes will be closely enough aligned that the viewer will not be able to tell the color difference when you edit from one camera to the next.

It is also very useful to use a slate or other device to make audio and video reference points at the beginning and end of each recorded segment. A camera with a loud click and a flash can work pretty well as a substitute for a slate as long as all the camcorders can see and hear it at the same time.

Mark your tapes with the slate (or camera) at the beginning of recording and the end of the performance before the recording is stopped. This will allow you to see how much timing drift there is between the camcorders. They will NOT all run at exactly the same speed and having a way to measure this is invaluable in editing. Usually the drift is small so you may not see it at five minutes but probably will at longer periods of time.

Starting all the camcorders rolling at the same time with one remote control might also simplify things later by minimizing time offset at the beginning of the tapes.

Dump the video from your tapes into the computer as DVD quality mpeg video files and have at it. I do not recommend that you use full DV quality since you will not need it even if you transfer your edited video to DVD.

Email if you have questions.
Good luck!

WK

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