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Good video editing software for OS X? And...video editing tips?

2K views 19 replies 4 participants last post by  playstopause 
#1 ·
So, I'm digitizing all my old VHS tapes and I'd like some free or cheap software to clean up the videos with. I need to be able to trim the video, crop it to remove rolling at the bottom or top of the screen on some videos, and to clean up as much of the analog mess that I can.

I'm using VideoGlide to capture the movies, and it's working pretty well. The downside is that it's capturing video as .mov files and they're several gigabytes big, it's fine because it's uncompressed, but god damn does it eat up my HDD space.

I'm using a Pinnacle Dazzle and an old Emerson VCR to do the capturing, the results are actually pretty nice, the video looks good (as good as it's gonna get from the source media) and the audio is great.

Suggestions? Tips? All is welcome. :metal:
 
#3 ·
I looked at Final Cut Pro but completely forgot about Final Cut Express :lol: Can it do all of the things I mentioned? I know that Apple software has been used in movie studios but I don't know for what or how extensively, but I don't think they'd let me down.
 
#5 ·
Yeah Mike, it can actually do everything you want. IMovie is pretty easy to use too but has far less features (wich you probably wouldn't need anyway).

Final Cut HD is pretty common in pro editing suites these days, especially for small inhouse production houses projects. You can use it for "broadcast" stuff, but the most used editing software and hardware is still beeing Avid "Media composer" (Avid also makes Pro Tools). It's been the standard for years. But Final Cut gained a lot of interest in the past years since it's way cheaper and you don't need a huge CPU to drive it.
 
#6 ·
I wish I had Avid, grrreat software, but expensive. I have iMovie, it's completely not made for what I want to do...

Frenchy, do you have any tips for "prettying up" these videos, some of the tapes have pretty good looking video actually (filmed in the 90s), but the older stuff is well...old. How much can I polish a turd?
 
#7 ·
Not that much, unfortunately. If the original source is bad, you can't really "upgrade" it... Unless you decide to go for a certain "look" (wich could be, for example, play the "vintage" angle of it by enhancing the pixels, the washed out colors... It could give you a cool esthetic, but you won't be able to see "more").

Anyway, the color correcting tools in Final Cut are pretty basic and not that efficient. It's "ok". What you would have to do, maybe, is give your images a color treatment, go trough grain and pixel reducing filters, play with color, brightness and contrast... I think you'd be ok doing basic stuff in Final Cut, but if you want something that's a bit slick, you gotta go with Adobe After Effects... And you kind of need someone who knows how to run it.... Not that difficult for home users, but there is soooo many plugins and hidden options that someone could help you. Some guys I know only do that for a living. But for you, it would be really if you want something that's really cool to watch. Depends on what you're transfering, I guess. lol
 
#9 ·
No problem man, my pleasure. It's so rare I can talk about stuff I really know about. :lol:
So yeah, i've been in many editing suites in my life. I like it. :D

Yes, you could basicelly play with the different plugins and color correction filters in the Final Cut. It's really ok for home videos stuff. I wouldn't use it professionnaly (or very lightly). It would have to be Filnal Cut HD. I think you'll be satisfied with what FC has to offer. But remember : the more you alter the image, the longer to render stuff. You also need lots of HD space for renders, especially if you want the highest quality. It depends on are long your sequences are. I suggest doing them in small batches rather than a few very large ones.
 
#10 ·
What I plan to do is capture and edit one movie at a time, and once I'm done I'll save it in a compressed format (.mp4 seems to be good). Then I'll delete the source files and start on the next. It's time consuming as hell, especially on a three year old iMac.
 
#11 ·
Yeah, it's pretty time consuming. :lol:

But that's the boring part of it. After the footage is dumped and classified, ready to work with, the fun part begins. The "creative process". :lol:

As long as you can uncompress your stuff for doing outputs, it's ok. But's going to take a while too. You'll probably have to make a source batch recapture or uncompress then render the whole thing. But hey, i'm no editor, I could ask though. :D
 
#13 ·
Well, last night I converted a video to .mp4 format using iSquint, the video quality took a major hit so I deleted the converted file and I'm going to try again using a different format/better software. I'm guessing DivX is the big "lossless video" format, but the converter isn't free. I want to be sure that's the best format to use before I buy it. Suggestions?
 
#14 ·
As far as formats go, I'm not a reliable source. I know we always compress stuff using Quicktime though. So it's a compressed Quicktime format. Maybe we just bring the whole resolution down instead of converting it to another format.
 
#15 ·
Hmm...I should futz around in Quicktime then and see what options I have. I definitely don't want to lower the resolution on these videos being that they're already "SD".

The video right now, uncompressed, is taking up between 20 to 30 GB of space (I can't remember the exact size, and I'm at work so I can't check). Fucking nuts! haha
 
#17 ·
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Aha! All I have to do is export the movie in QuickTime as an h.264 or whatever that format is, and I'll get small files but high quality woot! Frenchy, you led a horse to water!
 
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