Please recommend me a reliable video editing software that is easy to

Hello everyone.

I know this is kind of a stupid question that a simple google search should resolve, but honestly I have tried so many different options that my head is spinning.

Basically I just need an easy to use software that will let me either delete short sections of both the video and audio, or delete parts of them separately (doesn’t really matter either way).

The purpose for this is editing classic movies for my kids, but to take out the curse words and objectionable scenes.

So far I was successfully able to edit the classic “E.T.” after several tries. This was on a macbook which I no longer have, and I forget the name of the software anyway, all I remember was his punch line was “The video editor that a**** can’t give you” (referring to Adobe I guess?) but in google searches I can’t find it. It was really similar to avidemux, but it was also a pain in the ass because the video and audio kept getting out of sync every time I would do an edit, and I have to change the timing of the audio all the time. It was terrible.

I have tried editing “Back to the Future”, three separate times and failing each time for various reasons. The first time was really lame, when I took a break and came back to the macbook and accidentally un-plugged the power cord.

The third time on the PC I really thought I had it, I used SolveigMM Video Splitter, and it let me do all the edits first, and then you could export the movie after that. I’ve still got my session saved, but every time I try to export, the thing locks up after a certain percentage and never finishes.

So I know there are a million options out there, and I have tried 500,000 of them, and so far they all seem to fail because they: are too complicated, don’t do what I need, lock up, etc.

So wanted to get some input from the community on what a good tried and true software is that would let me do this fairly easily?

Thanks for your help!

I’m a video n00b, but keep hearing good things about Sony Vegas.

I purchased Quicktime for Windows primarily because it can export an moving image in single frames…

Think simple when using quicktime…

my personal examples…

youtube link 1 this process used exporting the original recorded material in single frames further processed in Gimp.

youtube link 2

I also used Final Cut Pro a looong time ago.

Think complex… then again I don’t know what has changed sing then, things could be simpler now, I’m not sure.

youtube link 3

Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas are good and for everything else search for the necessary tutorials/how to on Youtube.

I’m using Cuttermaran to cut out the ads (video and audio at the same time) from movies i record from TV. This works very well for me if I cut at I-Frames only. I remember I had audio sync (drifting) problems with other software, but I guess this depends on data format, encoding, etc. I’m a noob here, I just found this works for my input files.

Virtualdub is great for simple tasks like cutting video, it’s also free.

I mostly use After Effects for video editing, but i still use virtualdub to extract and convert video clips.

http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/

Sony Vegas is good too.

I used Movie Maker from Windows Essentials 2012 package to cut/join/make transitions/add text to a wedding video (sourced from few different cameras) and it all went very smooth, it supports all current video formats (hd included). Pretty simple software, but for basic editing it’s very usable and free (and if you remember Movie Maker from XP times - it’s different pair of shoes this time).

I’ve been using this and I’m about 1/3 of the way through Back to the Future. Things seem to be going well this time, and it’s nice because it lets you save your session and come back later. So now the real suspense will be when I try to export it… I will keep you updated

I’ve been using this and I’m about 1/3 of the way through Back to the Future. Things seem to be going well this time, and it’s nice because it lets you save your session and come back later. So now the real suspense will be when I try to export it… I will keep you updated

Done editing BTTF and currently exporting! It looks like it might be in wmv format, but I guess that will be alright for now, I can always convert if needed. I will post one final time to let you know status of final file If so I’ve got several more movies on the list to do: The never ending story, Annie, Jurassic Park, and BTTF 2 of course

Yes!! I have BTTF edited, exported, on 2 CD’s as xvid format, ready to watch on my TV! Yes!!! Thank you 0xrns!!!

The only thing I didn’t like about the process, is that Windows Movie Maker can only export to 2 formats: wmv and x.264. My TV won’t play either of those formats, so I had to go through another step of re-encoding to get the final output file. It took some trial and error:

• I tried x.264 and it would truncate my files after 1gb regardless of the settings. wtf?

*So I exported to wmv and tried to make the file relatively large (~3gb) to preserve quality as much as possible.

*Then I used “Format Factory” to convert to xvid and get it as close to 1.4 gb as possible so it would fit on 2 cd’s. Then avi splitter to split to ~700mb chunks

And I just burned my CD’s a little while ago.

Thank you!!!

my tv easily plays mp4/mkv files with x264 encodings, but as you said - you can always use some converter afterwards.

My TV is a 10 year old 25" CRT with VHS and DVD both. It’s a wonder it even supports xvid/divx So I’m pretty thrilled that this worked, I’ll take what I can get