TR Forums

Hey all,

I'm a bit new to the world of video editing. The guys at work use all manner of expensive software but I'm just looking for a simple tool that will join/trim video and rotate in 90 degree increments. At the moment I'm making do with a whole folder full of opensource, single-purpose tools. They do the job but I can't help but feel that joining and trimming files that need rotating 90 degrees shouldn't require at least four different tools!

Ideally decent free software exists but I'll pay if there's a cheap one that's significantly better than the freebies; I'm finding a minefield of conflicting advice and articles/guides that are poorly-disguised advertising. Far from impartial and no two articles compare the same programs so you have to assume that they're all just cherry-picking some fluff to pad out their fake list of "best software" and come to the conclusion that their own product is the best! I never expected the field to be so messed-up and corrupt. Video editing is a mature process on PC, I used to do it back in the days of Virtualdub for DVD-to-DivX days. What gives?

What do you gerbils use for your basic needs? I'm usually dealing with H.264 MP4 files....

Simply use Microsoft Movie Maker (if you can still get it, I didn't check). Works well enough for simple editing.

Avidemux. Awkward, but that's what I know of:
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

VirtualDub used to be better, but it was mostly for AVI. Maybe there are modern spinoffs that support well other container formats.

There's also Avisynth, but it's scripting based so quite awkward for simple one-off manipulations. And you'd still have to find some GUI for it, assuming a real one exists.
http://avs-plus.net/
https://avspmod.github.io/

liquidsquid wrote:

Simply use Microsoft Movie Maker (if you can still get it, I didn't check). Works well enough for simple editing.

Sadly it reached End of Support in January. It's not offered for download any longer. A shame, too, because it was the easiest video editor this side of iMovie.

This is, for some reason, a big hole in the Windows ecosystem. All the video packages I've messed around with on the PC are far more complicated than what came with Windows Essentials. For a "creators" update, the latest Windows 10 release seems to focus on consuming web, media, and games.

Your best bet might be the open-source Shotcut, which is available for Windows, Mac, and some popular Linux distros.

http://www.openshot.org/

Is another free open source one to try.

I've used Davinci Resolve since the demise of Windows Movie Maker (side note - it used to be seriously easy to make a quick movie AND burn it to a DVD with custom menus, etc. What the heck, Microsoft?). While it's not super simple, it is easy enough to do a quick trim/rotate/tranisition and export into just about any format. It has been a little picky about import formats, but if you stick to pretty standard fare it seems to work well.
Of course, it can be super powerful, but for a Free option it's the best I've been able to find recently.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Sadly [MS Movie Maker] reached End of Support in January. It's not offered for download any longer.

Come on now. This is the internet we're talking about. You absolutely can still download it.

Since people starting mentioning NLE editors, rather than just plain cut/join/rotate things, Blender also includes something of this kind:
https://www.blender.org/features/

DPete27 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Sadly [MS Movie Maker] reached End of Support in January. It's not offered for download any longer.

Come on now. This is the internet we're talking about. You absolutely can still download it.

Well, it's not offered by MS anymore. I personally wouldn't download from a third party.

Wow, what a coincidence. I should've poked my head in here as I had to do some last minute video editing last week.

Video Editor Master (From the Microsoft app store) seems like it should do what you need. But I couldn't use it because it supports all formats except MOV.

HD Video Converter Factory Pro is decent, but the free version only allows 5 minute video clips.

Filmora was a very advanced editing program, people have made movies with it. The free version only supports up to 720p videos, however.

DPete27 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Sadly [MS Movie Maker] reached End of Support in January. It's not offered for download any longer.

Come on now. This is the internet we're talking about. You absolutely can still download it.

I thought so as well... but NOPE. You can't because it is part of the Windows Live Essentials installation package. You can download the WLE installer, but it then tries to access a MS server to download the latest catalog files. And as those are removed the WLE installer no longer can find anything to install.

I always like simple solutions.

If you have a Windows 7 or 8 license around, how about dual booting?

https://www.google.com/search?q=dual+bo ... e&ie=UTF-8

I am gonna try to follow these instruction this weekend, as I have machine I was thinking about reverting back to Win 7 for.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3050502/ ... catch.html

For just basic trimming and I think rotation, VLC can do it.

Unfortunately I don't know of any good free software to do this, but I broke down and bought Sony Movie Studio for around $50 and I'm very happy with my purchase. It's the (much) cheaper, cut down, consumer version of their Vegas Pro professional video editing software. And it also comes with their Acid music making software and some other tools.

Avidemux can do everything you need, but is a bit clunky to use. I'm no video editing expert, but I've loaded Avidemux about a billion times. Takes about 6.5 seconds every time.

Thanks for the suggestions guys - I've had a look at a few of them since, and they're decent if no simpler or quicker than the individual tools I was already using.

Here's a potentially dumb question.

Can you trim/rotate video without having to re-encode? If I'm taking compressed x264 and trimming it and then saving it, I'm usually forced to re-encode the video which means I'm recompressing decompressed streams which results in lower compression ratios and lower quality. If VLC can playback video in any orientation and seek to any point in the clip, there should be no need to re-encode for something as simple as a flip and trim, right?

yes if you only need to rotate or trim use filter features in VLC, if you put a video in a video editing program you need to render every change you make in the timeline.

Takeshi7 wrote:

Unfortunately I don't know of any good free software to do this, but I broke down and bought Sony Movie Studio for around $50 and I'm very happy with my purchase. It's the (much) cheaper, cut down, consumer version of their Vegas Pro professional video editing software. And it also comes with their Acid music making software and some other tools.

For me $50 is the sweet spot. Might consider this.