Video Editing, How Do I Get Started?

[Manc]

It depends on your system. Whether you're using apple or PC. If you're using a Mac then I would say Final Cut Pro is pretty user friendly and there's an abundance of plugins you can purchase for stuff like editable intros and such. Adobe Premier is what I use as it can be used on both systems plus you can combine with other adobe products such as photoshop and after effects.

I'm completely self taught from a website called lynda.com. They have tutorials on most software and practice files to use as you follow along. Through using that I was able to teach myself in about a week span and start doing club promotion videos for my friends for some cash on the side. Once you get the hang of shortcuts both softwares are very straight forward. Personally I use Adobe Premier as I am a PC user. But the plugins for youtube and stuff that I can use with Final Cut Pro shorten a lot of editing time and make stuff look professionally done.

 

[konceptjones]

Be glad you're getting into it now and not back when I was doing it in the 90's. All you gotta do these days is buy software. Back then you had to have a decent camera, video capture card, SCSI drives with high throughput, Adobe Premier, and what was considered a lot of memory on your machine to get decent results (256MB+). I still have most of the stuff I used back then including my old copy of Premier 4.2. My capture card was a Matrox Mystique 220 with the Rainbow Runner daughtercard. This setup was one of the few that allowed you to fly in Macrovision protected VHS movies without any problems because it ignored it completely. It also had a max capture resolution of ATSC digital tv standard 480p (704x480) and in 1998 for a capture card that cost less than $500 that was damned good.