Hey Tek! I was thinking on doing a little project before hitting college again... a montage in honor of the BMW E30. (won't go into details, don't want to start fan-girling relentlessly xD) Thing is: I don't know Jack Schitt (ok, maybe a Small bit) when it comes to editing. And want to create something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsSOcNEpEaw (and maybe in the future, mix it up with something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5KIVbUO3zE ) I got some money for Christmas, so I am willing to buy software in order to make this a thing xD. Wanted to hear your guys' recommendations on what software/trial I should buy/get ; aswell as somewhere I can atleast learn the ropes to the editing world. Thanks in advance!!
TL;DR : I wanna make similar car montage like in the YouTube links above. Tell me what software to buy, and where I can go to learn.
What's your budget? There are loads of different options out there depending on what you want/need and how much money you have to spend.
I personally like Cyberlink Powerdirector. It's pretty easy to learn and has a simple intuitive interface with plenty of features to make a professional looking video. Amazon has PD12 Ultra on sale for $60
Other popular options are Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio, and Corel VideoStudio.
That PD12 is looking really really tempting for $60; taking into consideration the cost of the other software... You speak as if you'd worked with PD12 before; judging from the YouTube links, you think it will do a good job replicating edits like that? And btw, no, I'm not spending more than a couple hundred bucks on a little thing I want to do out of boredom... unless it will Really help me out =D
Sure, you should be able to recreate videos like that using PowerDirector.
I would definitely recommend starting out with PD12 before you move on to the more expensive and powerful tools like Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas. That way, you can get a feel for what you want to do with your videos and will know if it's something that you want to invest more time and money into.
That said, the video editing software isn't going to magically make all your footage look fantastic. The quality of the camera, the type of lens used, the settings used, and the composition of the shot can be equally important.
Also, additional tools like Adobe After Effects are often used to create fancy 3d-like graphics to go along with the final video that you can't necessarily recreate with the editing software on its own.
That's a really good point. Thanks for the awesome advice!
Since this is only a test, I was planning on getting some HD content from 'teh interwebz' with each individual content owner's permissions.... just to get something I can really work with for a jump start...
On my research I read about AE... But I think that will have to wait a while... one project at a time! xD
-- I'm thinking on buying PowerDirector, any suggestions as to where I can find help on recreating similar editing techniques used in those two videos? I'm guessing panning from still images is one of the many techniques; so any tips on that? Thanks bro!
I watched a few Youtube tutorial videos to help get me started, but at some point, you pretty much just to have to jump in and figure some things out by yourself. The basics are pretty straightforward so you shouldn't have any problems making something simple and then gradually moving on to more complex editing as you go.