I think I've done about all I can do with Windows Movie Maker. I've masked the fact I do my show with WMM long enough (using System font) but now I want to do things like superimposing logos and such. Free and otherwise what would you recommend? I also might need a USB Capture device for MR Dreamcast who doesn't play nice with my LCD.
Personally I've always preferred Vegas. Very good professional level software (of sorts) It's not the best and their are many more that are superior that I intend to jump to. I probably suggest you do the same. I use Vegas 10 currently and intend to upgrade to Premier Pro CS5 (or lower if cheaper) and after effects. Photoshop is a indispensable video editing tool. You may be able to get all of this software cheap if you are a student. I don't recommend spending alot if you aren't doing this for a living though. Rendering with these is a whole other question. For a while I was rending SD 420p say a 3minute video and it would take ten minutes to render. with a dual core and no GPU with 4gb ram. When I moved to rendering HD it took MUCH longer. maybe half an hour dual core no gpu 4gb ram. I installed a 5770 and this time decreased ALOT. It makes rendering MUCH faster. It takes maybe 20 minutes to render when Im listening to music and internet browsing with it rendering HD in the background. Not too shabby but I intend to get a better cpu (i5) and upgrade to a DDR3 based board and ram accordingly.
I've tried Vegas too. I liked it but don't have it on my PC yet. I currently use the following Software for Retro Core Adobe Photo Shop Adobe Media Encoder for Flash ( I use this to make the web F4V files) Gold Wave for audio editing ( not free but the trial is fully unlocked however it will prompt you to pay for a license every 20 commands) SWiSH Flash (for making the intro animations) UnLead Video Toolbox to put everything together. This is a very good bit of software that can work around different frame rates and sizes of many video clips to make them in to one. Virtual Dub is a right picky bastard when it comes to joining different source files together. And Virtual Dub. Great free software with the plugins you could ever want. Very easy to use for editing and adding logos and effects to your videos. Yakumo
I got a trial of Corel Studio x4 I like that the rendering doesn't take up the CPU's full resources like WMM does So my laptop doesn't get so hot I can fry an Egg on it. What I don't like though is the limited options in screen resolution and not being able to set the bitrate I want.
Can you not set what ratio it outputs at? I figure you could change the bitrate with that. I know that you can do in Vegas.
I suggest you get the Sony Vegas trial. I always use for more videos, I really like it. It's a very simple management
The closest I can get is an MP4 at 2000KBs at 640x480 I do my show at 1500kbs 640x480 converting wmv to XVID
Get the trial for vegas and see if you prefer it. If you do either buy (you can probably get student deals if you're a student) or pirate it. You can definately modify the bitrate in Vegas cos theirs a tab for it when customising the rendering template. (I've personally never used it I think.)
