Video editing and conversion
Introduction
Let's first present a few definitions, taken from various Wikipedia articles.
“Video editing is the process of re-arranging or modifying segments of video to form another piece of video. The goals of video editing are the same as in film editing - the removal of unwanted footage, the isolation of desired footage, and the arrangement of footage in time to synthesize a new piece of footage.” (Video editing, retrieved 16:46, 2 April 2007 (MEST))
“Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera or DVD player—to digital video. The resulting digital data are computer files referred to as a digital video stream, or more often, simply video stream. This is in contrast with screencasting, in which previously digitized video is captured while displayed on a digital monitor. TV tuner cards have a television tuner with the capabilities to capture broadcast television.” (Video capture, retrieved April 22 2012.)
“Video converters are computer programs that can change the storage format of digital video in a process called transcoding.” Comparison of video converters, retrieved April 22, 2012).
“A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on a computer screen, enhanced with audio narration.” (Wikipedia, retrieved April 2012)
This article so far just includes a few software links. See also:
- Multimedia container format (various file formats)
- Codec (encoding of video, audio, etc.)
- Digital video
- Video editing
- Videoconferencing
Video editing Software
Video editing introductions and overviews
- video editing (Wikipedia, short overview)
- non-linear video editing (Wikipedia)
- Video editing software (Wikipedia, Overview)
- Comparison of video editing software (Wikipedia, good comparison, including price, system requirements, feature sets.)
- List of videoediting software (Wikipedia)
- low-cost video-editing tools
Free editing software
The following are probably the most popular
- IMovie (Wikipedia) Free on Macs.
- Windows Movie Maker (Wikipedia). Discontinued for Win10
Since Movie Maker is discontinued, below is a incomplete list of free video editors made in fall 2017. Not fully explored at this time (Daniel K. Schneider (talk) 20:20, 1 November 2017 (CET)).
| Software | OpenShot | ShotCut | VSDC | VideoPAD | DaVinci Resolve | LightWorks | Kdenlive | Avidemux |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OS | Linux, Mac, Win. | Linux, Mac, Win | Win | Win, Mac, iPad, Android | macOS, Win, Linux | Win, Linux, macOS | Linux, Mac (?) | Win, Linux, macOS |
| Documentation links | User Guide | FAQ | How To | Videopad support | Documentation wiki | |||
| Ease of use | Fairly easy, Practical context menu | Fairly easy, see below. | Fairly easy. Also includes a "wizard". | Most simple to use (compared to the others) | Complex software | Fairly easy to use. From the little testing I did, I liked this one best in terms of easy/power ratio. | Very simple | |
| Problems | Most everything is done with a filter who must be attached to an object. Understanding filters requires reading | Icons, ribbons and text do not display well on a 4K screen with big fonts. | This is a trial version for home use, but it will export after ignoring the warning | Very difficult to install under Debian/Ubuntu.
Registration required. |
Less functionality than others (but to nice to have for small quick projects) | |||
| Input video formats | lots (ffmpeg) | lots | lots | |||||
| Other media input | Typical raster formats (JPG, PNG, etc.), various sound | Most raster image formats, SVG, HTML5, various sound | Most raster image formats | |||||
| Output formats | Container formats: MP6(H.264), WebM, OGG, AVI.
Has preset profiles |
lots of supported container formats & codecs
No preset profiles. |
Several | |||||
| Basic editing (cut and trim, delete and move segments) | yes | yes | Right click on the object in the timeline. In the editing video one can set markers and apply splitting. | yes | ||||
| Cropping | yes | yes (through a filter) | yes (use clip monitor and add edge crop effect) | yes | ||||
| Adding titles | Yes | On top of a "color" (open other->color) | Yes (plus several other "geometric" objects. | yes | yes | |||
| Multi-track | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | ||
| Limitations if freemium ware | - | - | hardware acceleration | Restricted to YouTube/Vimeo 720p format | - | |||
| Tested on: | Nov. 2017:Ubuntu 16, Win8 | Nov. 2017:Ubuntu 16, Win8 | Nov 2017: Win8 | Nov 2017: Win8 | Nov 2017: Win8 | not tested | Nov 2017: Ubuntu | Nov 2017: Win8 |
Popular commercial editing software
- Cheaper (< $100) systems
- Adobe Premiere Elements
- Video2x Video workshop and converter (not tested).
- Medium-end popular systems, often referred to as the "A-Team"
- Avid
- Adobe Premiere
- Final Cut Pro (Apple)
Specialized commercial
- Software to create Movie Credits VideoTagger
Encoders, converters/transcoders
Free encoders / converters
(Note: These should be separated into encoders, converters and multi-purpose tools)
- FireOgg is a Firefox plugin that can convert mp4 to to ogv and webm. Advanced option allows to parametrize codecs, i.e. video (size, framerate, aspect, quality, etc.) and audio quality
- MEncoder (Wikipedia) Free converter)
- XMedia-recode. Can handle most formats. Page in German, English version of software exists. Read the Wikipedia article
- Miro video converter Converts to mp4, ogg and webm.
- ffmpegx for MacIntosh
- SUPER, Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. (see also the Wikipedia article).
- mplayerhq.hu - MEncoder and MPlayer, Win, Linux
- Freemake Video Converter (Wikipedia)
- Handbreak, video converter (Wikipedia)
- Online converter services
- Online-convert.com Online converter service for various file formats.
- OnlineVideoConverter.com. On converter. Heavy adds.
- Adware and nagware
- MediaCoder for Windows. Read Wikipedia's MediaCoder. Probably one of the best free programs, but you will have to cope with ad/nagware.
- Real Video Editor (convertor for some formats)
- Unknown status
- Adobe Media Encoder (Win). This product comes with Flash and CS5 suites, but it looks like it can be downloaded (not tested).
Capturing monitor activities
- Overviews
- screencasting (Wikipedia)
- Comparison of screencasting software
- Free software (all sorts of licences)
- VLC Media Player Read VLC media player (Wikipedia). This is probably the best bet. The program is stable and includes many features, but then we are not experts - Daniel K. Schneider 12:45, 22 April 2012 (CEST)
- Camstudio. Read CamStudio (Wikipedia)
- Freeseer Project Home Page. Read Freeseer (Wikipedia)
- Jing, Read Jing (Wikipedia)
- Screenpresso. Read Screenpresso at Wikipedia.
- Commercial
- Adobe Captivate
- Camtasia
- ... others (needs to be completed)
Other software
- FFmpeg (Wikipedia). Popular software project that is used in many other open source and commercial products.
- Gspot is another nice free tool that displays information about at video file. Unfortunately it is outdated (last upgraded in 2007 as of April 2012), i.e. it can't precisely identify new video formats