Free Movie Editing Software (windows XP)?

Yes.. i can/have googled it, yes.. I've looked at download.com.. however; I'm more intrested in a members direct opinion which DOES use the movie editing software they would recommend; I have a 1gb movie I need to cut down to 25mb to fit it in Gmail

and when I mean Free.. I don't mean Free-to-try; free as in the term used.

thanks all ~!

What exactly do you mean? You want to cut and paste certain pieces into one file, or just reduce the size?

If you just want to reduce size, I would go with megui. It has a steep learning curve, but it is muxing, so it looses the least amount of quality possible. I regularly mux to MKV, sometimes cut down the size 3/4, with no visible reduction of quality on my screen.

Originally posted by TKDRL
What exactly do you mean? You want to cut and paste certain pieces into one file, or just reduce the size?

If you just want to reduce size, I would go with megui. It has a steep learning curve, but it is muxing, so it looses the least amount of quality possible. I regularly mux to MKV, sometimes cut down the size 3/4, with no visible reduction of quality on my screen.

thanks, yes.. just want to reduce the size, at least for now to show my friend the quality of the video/audio taken.

I don't have a lot of time on my hands to dig to deep into a program just to shorten it a bit.. any other suggestions w/o the steep curve ?

reply to post by Komodo


KGBarchiver might do it

It compresses files possibly to your requirements.

Edit: The again i get the idea your computing skillz aren't that brilliant so chances are you would find the program itself very hard to use.

Originally posted by TedHodgson
reply to post by Komodo

 

KGBarchiver might do it

It compresses files possibly to your requirements.

sounds a little spooky actually LOL ..

i'll look it up .. have you used the software yourself ? if so, is there a steep curve?

ETA: yea.. not looking for a compression s/w.. just something to cut a 25mb portion from the original.

reply to post by Komodo



Just want to say first that I have not used it as of yet...a friend recommended I take a look at this the other day.

Lightworks Public Beta

I have only given it a cursory glance so far, as my little netbook that I use probably cannot handle what it needs...

Just a suggestion.

reply to post by Komodo


All the time for file compression, But then again i know computers better than the back of my own hand

Originally posted by edaced4
reply to post by Komodo

 

Just want to say first that I have not used it as of yet...a friend recommended I take a look at this the other day.

Lightworks Public Beta

I have only given it a cursory glance so far, as my little netbook that I use probably cannot handle what it needs...

Just a suggestion.

wow, very cool~! looking at the site now.. I'll let you know what i find out.. thanks! (star for yas :lol

Try an amazing bit of free software called 'Handbreak' its by far the best free software for compressing movies that i have ever seen. Its very easy to use , you dont have to be some kind of codec expert to get it right. The Best thing about it is that you can specify how large you want the output file to be , it then does a test render of just a few seconds so you can check the quality before committing to a couple of hours processing time to do a whole movie. It can take a few atempts of tweaking the settings to get the best quality v the smallest film size but its worth it.

Sometimes using a 2 pass render can really improve the quality of the output but this will take twice as long to render. With the quick preview you can really mess about with it. You can usually get 20% of the original size without any loss of quality at all.

Your asking a hell of a lot if you want to go from 1gb to 25mg theres no way to do that without video quality suffering.

Handbreak website

One other way you could send a movie to a friend is to use something like dropbox or skydrive. you get 25 gig storage on skydrive free when you sign up for a hotmail account. that way you could use handbreak to reduce your movie to 250mb and not loose any quality , upload it to skydrive public folder and then just send your friend the link to download it

reply to post by edaced4


so far, so good, I had to dL 2 required files and had to reg to dL the program itself, not a big deal, but, i'm not very crazy about dL'n Quicktime....

however, I found a 'snag'.. it doesn't support 30fps.. only 25fps and got a window(?) message that stated I needed 3gbs of system resources to ...and I don't remember the rest.. I'll have to re-start the program and see if it comes up again ..

the interface is pretty straight forward, big icons on the left, with hints at the bottom you can turn on and off and best thing is, of course, it's open source. The code is going to be released in 5 weeks, states the note on the front page..

if i can get my 30fps down to 25fps.. I'll be cooking

got any suggestions ?

If your concern is delivery, and your reason for wanting to share the movie is to show the video and audio quality, you should just find another way of delivering it to him. Dropbox has a high file size limit, I think up to 500mb depending on the account.

It's free.

Get dropbox, have your friend get dropbox, now you can instantly share huge files with anyone you choose.


Sorry this wasn't really an answer to your question, but I hope it helps.


***ETA - Sorry, for some reason I totally disregarded that you were talking about a 1gb file. IGNORE ME!

Originally posted by Komodo
reply to post by edaced4

 

so far, so good, I had to dL 2 required files and had to reg to dL the program itself, not a big deal, but, i'm not very crazy about dL'n Quicktime....

however, I found a 'snag'.. it doesn't support 30fps.. only 25fps

and got a window(?) message that stated I needed 3gbs of system resources to ...and I don't remember the rest.. I'll have to re-start the program and see if it comes up again ..

the interface is pretty straight forward, big icons on the left, with hints at the bottom you can turn on and off and best thing is, of course, it's open source. The code is going to be released in 5 weeks, states the note on the front page..

if i can get my 30fps down to 25fps.. I'll be cooking

got any suggestions ?

I have started watching the video tutorial (again, this is very new to me as well ). When you create your project, there should be a dropdown box to choose the framerate?? The one in the tut shows a few different frame rates

What format is the video in now? (.avi, .mpg, .mp4, etc.) Probably the best all-around video/audio manipulator is ffmpeg but it is definitely not very user-friendly. It is a command-line operated utility and it will convert just about anything to anything.

If your only concern right now is just reducing the file size, you could simply upload it to YouTube. That will convert the video into .flv which is typically a much smaller file size. Your friend could view it there online or you could download it with the new format and send it via email.

With all the trouble you're going through, it might be quicker to get a cheap thumbdrive, copy the file to it and mail it.

Two suggestions, First is Xmedia recode does take some knowledge but is easy to use. The second is a website that will give you choices and reviews on the different software. The link I'm providing all ready has the search done so just go through the choices and see what you like.

Alternativeto

reply to post by Komodo


I personally really enjoy the NCH software line (free versions don't have ALL the bells and whistles but works for everything I've needed to do)

I love there VIDEOPAD program for video editing

and use there WAVEPAD program for audio editing

You can probably find other programs on WWW.CNET.COM

If you just want cut a segment from a video, Windows Movie Maker does that.

Originally posted by Shadoefax
What format is the video in now? (.avi, .mpg, .mp4, etc.) Probably the best all-around video/audio manipulator is ffmpeg but it is definitely not very user-friendly. It is a command-line operated utility and it will convert just about anything to anything.

If your only concern right now is just reducing the file size, you could simply upload it to YouTube. That will convert the video into .flv which is typically a much smaller file size. Your friend could view it there online or you could download it with the new format and send it via email.

edit on 4/22/2012 by Shadoefax because: (no reason given)

it's in AVI

*to be sure*

Originally posted by Shadoefax
What format is the video in now? (.avi, .mpg, .mp4, etc.) Probably the best all-around video/audio manipulator is ffmpeg but it is definitely not very user-friendly. It is a command-line operated utility and it will convert just about anything to anything.

If your only concern right now is just reducing the file size, you could simply upload it to YouTube. That will convert the video into .flv which is typically a much smaller file size. Your friend could view it there online or you could download it with the new format and send it via email.

edit on 4/22/2012 by Shadoefax because: (no reason given)

thx Shadoefax,

for now, just want to cut a portion out of the original to get it up on YT to show him the quality of the flip cam I was using.

I went over to his house and did a quick recording of him (see my music vid on Music forum) and he's very happy.

Definetly looking into FFMPEG

Originally posted by ArMaP
If you just want cut a segment from a video, Windows Movie Maker does that.

RIght, and I don't have WMM for xp (not sure if I deleted or it never shipped with it after my last format).. I rather not DL SP3 all over again. LOL

thanks though