is this the right software for me?

James-Taylor wrote on 12/27/2018, 6:07 PM

I was given this software to make movies. My goal is to put together the 23 short clips taken on Christmas day with my video camera. I don't want quick clips or background music. I just want to weave the various clips end to end to make a final product that is a complete record of all my Christmas filming. Is this the right software to do what I want done or am I back to putting a blank disk into my dvd recorder and doing the record / pause / record thing that I have had to do since I shot my movies on vhs-c tapes?

Comments

browj2 wrote on 12/27/2018, 7:50 PM

Hi,

Is the version that you have the free version or the Plus Edition?

See this link and watch the tutorial:

https://www.magix.com/ca/video/fastcut/tutorials/#c633669

I have Fastcut at home, never tried it, since I have Movie Edit Pro and Video Pro X.

Fastcut probably does what you want. You already have it, so try it.

What format do you want for a final product? DVD, mp4, BluRay? Are you distributing the movie - YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, USB sticks, DVD, BR?

I can't imagine just stringing together a bunch of video clips and calling it a movie. I need a title, preferably with a fancy intro and some music to kick it off. Then most, if not all of my clips are trimmed. Usually I need to adjust brightness/contrast gamma, white balance/colour. Then I often add transitions to make scenes flow from one to another as this type of filming usually does not flow nicely from scene to scene. I sometimes add in photos, sometimes replacing part of the video but keeping the sound. I may do some cropping or zooming of a clip - why is a small part of a lamp showing at the edge? Sometimes I have overlays - picture-in-picture, and collages.

Then there is sound. In one recent video for Christmas, I transitioned the audio, not the video so that the audio blended from one scene to the next. I normalize the audio, usually all clips together to get an even volume. I usually have to use compression as some speech is faint where other audio is loud, etc. Sometimes I dub in some audio, even replacing dialog because someone was too far from the mic, or something. Sometimes I need to remove or replace some sound, fix some sound, etc. And at the end, I like to have a nice finish, so I may have an outro followed by credits (who were those people I filmed 20 or 30 years ago?), sometimes with just a head shot from the video beside the name.

To do this, one needs a proper video editor like Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus/Premium, or VPX, or Vegas Movie Studio, or Vegas Pro.

So, I suggest that you start with something, like Fastcut, learn what it does, try it out, determine what all you really want or need to do, and go with it or something else. BTW, you aren't going to damage your recorded video clips by doing any of this, so you can play around to your heart's content. These video programs are non-destructive and do not modify the source material, they only use it.

John CB

johnebaker wrote on 12/28/2018, 4:22 AM

@James-Taylor

Fastcut will do what you want, however you will quickly find that you have very little to no control over what it does to your video - as John CB has suggested try it first.

Personally I would recommend Movie Edit Pro Plus or Premium there are plenty of tutorials on how to get started with it - see John CB's tutorials in the Tutorials section of the forum and it does have a couple of wizards to get you started quickly.

HTH

John EB