Advice on buying new software

[Mzebe12]

Hi. I recently bought a new digital camera (video and photo camera) and would like to edit the things i record on my pc.. I do have some small expirience in home video editing, but nothing good enough to be a professional. I decided to buy some new software for editing, but there is ALOT of that "exelent" software out there... So i would need a friendly advice on what to buy issue? Some of the important things that i'd really like that software to have is : green screen editing, menu editor, effects such as fade in out and those new 3d effetcs... I would like good photo editing tool with all kinds of editing effects and options... the price range i can afford for each program is about 500$ each - tops! Or 1000$ for both programs..Thanks!

[ebackhus]

Adobe Premiere covers those bases. $799 retail.

[Mzebe12]

Thanks i checked it out and i seems awesome, but quite difficult to learn.... I am still browsing for something alike but easier..But if i can't find anything easier to work with, i think i'm going to purchase Adobe Premiere.. Thanks for your tip!

[Damion]

Premier is accualy pretty easy to learn. Also with it beeing such a popular program there are a lot of good tutorials and books out there to help you learn it. Premier looked extremly over welming when i used it two years ago but after getting into it, it wasn't so scary, green screen effects and a lot of visual effects are verry easy to preform in premier. There are other programs out there that may be easier to learn but I would not waste my money on it as there not much better then windows movie maker.

[gistek]

Anything that will do all the stuff you want to do will take some time to learn. If you've got the money, PhotoShop is probably the best way to go.

For folks with less money, Irfanview will do a lot of image manipulation and is very easy to learn. It doesn't do pixel level or add text, though. For that I usually use either Paint or OpenOffice Impress.

My movie editor is Pinnacle Studio Plus. It works great except for some minor issues regarding capturing from a VCR (You have to have a signal coming in before you hit StartCapture otherwise the capture hangs.) I haven't done any green screen yet, but it came with a green cloth, so it should be capable. I've tried Windows Movie Maker, but couldn't get it to do what I wanted. Probably because I'm too familiar with Pinnacle Studio.