Good video editing app for school project?

[dg10050]

Anyone know of a nice app for editing videos? I have to do a project for Spanish class where we make sort of a tour guide-style video. I'm looking for something (preferably free) that would allow me to do simple stuff like add text, transitions, video filters, other interesting effects, etc. This doesn't necessarily need to look amazing, but it needs to look like I put some effort into it. The ability to easily create a DVD would be nice too.

 

[notnarb]

Windows movie maker if you use windows, cinerra if you use linux (as your avatar implies). If you dual boot both, go with WMM, a lot of people bitch about it, but its really not that bad, it depends on your WMM version whether or not you can burn DVDs with it, but you can just use a video converter for that

 

[DarkMatt]

Sony Vegas is a great program, well worth using. It isn't free, but there is a 30 day trial version of it on Sony's website that should get you out of trouble. Otherwise, there's always other ways of finding it.

 

[usmagen]

or if you wanna go hardcore editing you can use adobe premiere

 

[BigX]

Pinnacles VideoSpin is free too.
IIRC that is the free version of their studio software.
I use Pinnacle Studio for my holiday videos :-)

 

[FAST6191]

DVDs can be taken care of quite easily (FAVC if in Windows: see spoiler section http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=64975 ) so I am going to ignore that part.

Video editing, I use avisynth for just about which could accomplish all you want and then some but it is a programming language which you probably do not care to learn for a quick project.

Freeware video then.
Virtualdub is OK and can do filters nicely but for anything beyond the most rudimentary cutting and pasting of clips it becomes bothersome.

Windows movie maker, I despise it but only because I find the interface clunky, the program unstable for anything slightly complex (i.e. editing more than 5 longish clips together) and the output useless (wmv is not my favourite thing and then it was not exactly good quality). If you do not care to learn anything about video editing feel free to do it as it should work.

In the end I guess I should say get a whole bunch of apps each suited to a task and use those.
For text unless it is actually on image I would say make subtitles (hardsub them if you have to)

Virtualdub is good for basic editing, grab a copy of virtualdubmpeg2 if you have a camera that is likely to output mpeg format (quite a lot of them) and virtualdubmod if you have something more exotic or have trouble opening files in the original (i.e. you use more modern codecs).
If you have to do a lot have a go just appending all the files together and chopping out the bits you do not want.

Subtitles, DVD subtitles are pictures whereas normal subtitles for the PC are text based (xml at worst). Converting between the two is not hard though (going from DVD to text is harder).
For making them:
I suggest you have a go with something from the following site:
http://www.free-codecs.com/Software/Subtitle_Tools.htm
For tweaking the output of said subtitles:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DVDSubEdit.htm you can do it inside already made DVDs so no need to worry there.

 

[Mangofett]

Adobe Premiere Elements

Its not free, but easily cracked.

 

[dg10050]

Thanks. I happened to come across a copy of Sony Vegas, so I'm going to check it out. I've also been messing around a bit with Cinelerra.

 

[Salamantis]

If you want free and simple go with Windows Movie Maker.

But if you want to kick it up a notch go with Adobe Premiere.