Editing video: What software do we use?
I was recently asked by a journalism teacher to share some information about what programs we use to edit video for the YDR. The short answer is we use a variety of programs depending on the skill of the editor and the intricacy of the video. If you’re interested in more detail about how we approach this, though, my full response is below:
Our reporters use iMovie, Flip camera editing software and Windows Movie Maker for most of their videos. They are easy to learn/use programs but they also provide limited editing options. You don’t have an option to use b roll but they are also mostly free programs so it’s hard to complain.
Our photographers and more advanced video producers use a combination of Adobe Premiere Elements and Final Cut Express. Both are stripped down versions of big editing programs but they do everything we need them to. You can adjust audio levels, add text easily and use b roll.
Premiere Express is for PCs and can be had for about $150. I would make sure to get Premiere Elements 10 (the newest version) because it seems to fix a lot of the little bugs that we ran across in earlier versions and it works nicely with all types of video.
Final Cut Express is for Macs, but they seem to be moving away from supporting it. They haven’t released and update in a long time and they seem to be pushing people to their bigger editing software, Final Cut Pro X. Considering Final Cut Express is $200 and they just dramatically dropped the price of Final Cut Pro X (from over $1,000) to $300 I’d be temped to go for the Pro version if I had a Mac. We’re running into support issues with Final Cut Express and some of the new video cameras out there, too.