Video editors for my JVC Enverio Hard drive camcorder

Trying to do more with my blog - given that I have done only two posts since I started over a year ago, posting more frequently should not be hard to achieve!

So today let's talk about video editors. Two years ago, I received a JVC Hybrid (i.e. solid state memory and/or built in harddisk) camcorder. This little bundle is a really fine camcorder - it takes great movies, is easy to use and is quite compact. Battery life seems to be a bit more than 2 hours so, if you don't go crazy, you have plenty of battery to record reasonably long sessions.

The only problem has been with the 'production' of the video's - i.e. taking the video files, downloading them (no problem) and then arranging them, editing them, adding titles and, finally, recording them to YouTube, DVD, or whatever so other people can see them.

JVC provides a 'limited capability' version of 'Power Director' which works but is a bit clunky and limited in what it can do. The program is actually 3 programs - each of which is discrete and, to some extent, seem to overlap in functionality. But it does work and I was able to product a video product. An upgraded product would cost about $60.

Of the many video editors out there, I then choose an Adobe product - Adobe Premiere Elements 4. It came combined with Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 which I wanted anyways so, for an addition $30 or so, I opt'ed to add it. Now, as background, JVC uses a mpeg 2 format for it's computer files (file extension is 'mod'). And reviewers of the Adobe program had indicated that Adobe Premiere Elements 4 (PE4) did not handle *.mod files well at all. Adobe says it will - reviewers say no way.

Well, guess what, the reviewers were right. Long story shortened - it doesn't work. It crashes when you try. There are work arounds which involve translating (with an external converter) the *.mod files to another format (e.g. *.mvi) that PE4 would handle. This conversion turned out to be a very lengthly and laborious process (even on a dual core AMD processor running at 3 GHz and with 4 GB of RAM) - hours to process 20 minutes of video. Ugly.

So PE4 was a loser. I sort of sat back and sulked for a year or so. Tried again and again with both PE4 and Power Director. Still hated both. Finally organized another look at the video editor market (June 2009), downloaded some trial runs and then decided on Corel's Visual Studio Pro X2.

Bought Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 on EBAY in an original, sealed package and I am delighted with it so far. It handles the *.mod files with no complaint. And it actually came with a real printed manual! Boy, that is so unusual in today's world - absolutely wonderful. Still figuring out to use it - for example, it has the capability to lighten or darken an entire clip which, for the video I am working on, is essential (one clip is taken under a shadowed pavilion on a bright sun shiney day. The people under the pavilion are almost lost in the shadows. This will let me bring them out of the dark, so to speak.

Lots more to explore but right now, Video Studio rocks!