Video software

nbrege · Feb 14, 2017

Looking to upgrade my video software beyond GoPro Studio. Does anybody here use PowerDirector?
Their "Ultimate" version is $80 & consistantly ranks high among consumer level editors. I dont need (or want to learn) a high-end program like Adobe Premiere. Thanks for any comments or recommendations.

Frank Foster · Feb 14, 2017

I have power director ultra 14, and I ain't crazy about it. It works, bit like many of the rather inexpensive video editing/processing programs, it takes awhile to learn, and is not very fast. If I use it to upload to youtube, and I have cable internet, I usually go away and do something else for awhile. And just about every time you fire it up, they offer you an upgrade. Right now I just ran it, to see which version I have, and I got a valentines day special to upgrade to ultra 15 for $49....

my-spot · Feb 14, 2017

I use HitFilm 4 Express. Powerful, free with registration, has many add-ons, but does almost everything you could ask. The main limitation is the "express" version is limited to 1080p output and I think it could be challenging for beginners. I'm still figuring out most of it. My bet is that it is the most powerful free NLE out there.

Acroduster · Feb 15, 2017

PowerDirector is what I have used for the past 5 years or so and it is a good piece of software for the money. I've often flirted with stepping up to one of the big boys, but I just don't do enough editing to justify it yet.

Jose969 · Feb 15, 2017

my-spot said:
I use HitFilm 4 Express. Powerful, free with registration, has many add-ons, but does almost everything you could ask. The main limitation is the "express" version is limited to 1080p output and I think it could be challenging for beginners. I'm still figuring out most of it. My bet is that it is the most powerful free NLE out there.

I downloaded hitfilm to work on some other project and I was way out of my league. It was a little confusing. Guess I need to take my time with it, but it seems more for editing movies you film. I don't know.

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DJMc · Feb 15, 2017

I second Hitfilm Express. I'm learning too and it is very powerful - will likely do things you don't need for aerial video editing. But that's also one of its strengths - you can buy add on packs for a few £/€/$ that just do the bits you need. There are no limits on exports or any watermark things in the free version.

The full version does 4k now.

You do need to spend some time with it, but there are tons of videos both from the developers on their own channel and users. That's one of the best things, its fully develped commerical software but does have a proper community feel.

Try it for free...what can go wrong?

NightStorm · Feb 19, 2017

nbrege said:
Looking to upgrade my video software beyond GoPro Studio. Does anybody here use PowerDirector?
Their "Ultimate" version is $80 & consistantly ranks high among consumer level editors. I dont need (or want to learn) a high-end program like Adobe Premiere. Thanks for any comments or recommendations.

I have been using PowerDirectory for a couple of years. I originally picked it because of the combination of what I can afford and the positive reviews. After using it for this long my opinion of the review sites has dropped considerably.

It is OK. It is constantly pushing product at you with ads for various other Cyberlink products or pestering you to upgrade. Crashes more than I like. In its favor its auto-backup works quite well so you end up loosing your work only about 30-40% of the time when it crashes. The stabilizer is poor and the enhanced stabilizer is enhanced-poor.

I use three platforms: linux, OSX, and Windows pretty much in that order (in fact I currently only have the Windows box so that I can run PowerDirectory and Mercalli [the later of which is excellent-excellent-excellent btw]).

So I'm often look'n around at what is available.

Housebound last weekend with some bug-or-other I again started looking around. Looked at OpenShot (which I liked back in the day), Pitivi, and ShotCut each downloaded direct from the respective project site.

To skip to the end: take a look at ShotCut, it runs on all three platforms and I found it to be very good. I was surprised at myself that I'd not heard of it before, don't know how I'd missed it. I found OpenShot to be a bit of a pig, Pitivi was really really sluggish, while ShotCut just sailed through everything. Very fast, responsive, and deceptively powerful. I say "deceptively" because when you first bring it up it looks quite minimalistic. Plus the author (and others) have put up a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube showing how to do various things with it. Another thing I like is that ShotCut is not some quick "Lets do a multiplatform video editor!" project, the author has been at it for over 10 years.