chrisdv98 Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Hi guys, We, for many years now, have been using windows movie maker in order to do all video editing in school. However all of our cameras now record in mp4 format onto SD cards. This means that all the pupils/staff have to run their files through a converter first which is time consuming and also causes space wasting on the network. We also have problems with movie maker - we find that it will regularly crash if a user has got files in their collection that have long, complicated files or a file name with symbols such as underscores in it (regularly found on the net). So.... we need to find some software that is stable to run on both xp and vista and also is relatively cheap. Ideally we wouldnt want less functionality than movie maker (shouldnt be difficult). We would like it to have the ease of movie maker with the possibility of slightly more advanced stuff for the more ambitious kids and staff. What are you guys using? What do you recommend? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
notalot Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 We use Serif here, deployed threw GPO haven’t had a single problem with it. We paid about £650 last year for 60 concurrent users. Students and teachers just picked it up they also offer teachers a copy for £10
K.C.Leblanc Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 We're deploying Serif MoviePlus X2 over the summer. Does MP4 and is pretty user friendly.
chrisdv98 Posted June 29, 2009 Author Posted June 29, 2009 I have a copy of Serif Movie Plus x3 on my desk, am about to install it and have a look. Is this the latest version? 60 concurrent users probably would suffice for us too. Does the Serif product have a good set of built in transitions and effects?
broc Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Our Media Studies dept use Adobe Premiere Elements 7, the academic licence was £26 per system earlier this year. There are some good online tutorials to help with training too. You can download it for a free trial.
Nausey Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 We are currently on Premiere Elements 3, moving up to 7. I would suggest using this because it is simple to use after a little bit of tutorage and it will allow them to gain familiarity with the abode software, rather than with something like serif, they wouldn't be able to pass over the knowledge they gained to Premiere Cs 4. I found that Premiere is fairly happy with mp4's etc.
cookie_monster Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Can Adobe Premiere Elements 7 be installed via GPO?
dhicks Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 We are currently on Premiere Elements 3, moving up to 7. We bought 3 copies of Premiere Elements 7 but have found it to be somewhat unstable, so hopefully we'll get the Serif suite of software to install over the summer. -- David Hicks
leco Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 To put the cat amongst the pigeons - we have Serif, those who use it say it's, erm, awfull. Maybe it's my system, the workstations or the users, but Serif takes an age to do some stuff. Downloads from the cameras really fast, then takes forever to index it all, meanwhile the workstation is unusable. When on a tight time scale, as this user is (lunchtime club) makes life a little difficult to get anything finished. I will temper the above with a caveat - I'm just repeating what I've been told as I've not used it myself.
rocknrollstar Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 I wouldn't say Serif is awful- I was sent an evaluation copy for free, and it does all my needs. The children don't use it, but I am sure they could with minimal training. Can easily make dvds with nice menus etc. The problem with Premier Elements is that you need a beast of a PC to run it properly, and it's also much more advanced to use. Serif software falls in the middle of MovieMaker and Elements. Certainly recommended for Primary age.
dhicks Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Maybe it's my system, the workstations or the users, but Serif takes an age to do some stuff. Downloads from the cameras really fast, then takes forever to index it all, meanwhile the workstation is unusable. But we're getting the same issues with Premier Elements! I think maybe the main problem is end-users expecting a bit too much. I use Premier Elements at home and it works great, but that's on my own PC with a dedicated mirrored RAID array for video storage and I don't expect the computer to do more than one thing at a time. Children (and staff) tend to be impatient and end up hammering any available on-screen buttons in a rapidly-decreasing circle of frustration. -- David Hicks
wesleyw Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Serif also release older versions for free and it's more capable than movie maker and if the only reasons are it crashes and needs to have files converted means serif is a very good option. Wes
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