Video Editing - Power Director?

[melart]

I'm looking for a video editing suite to produce DVD's of our school productions. I've been using my own Mac (iMovie and iDVD) to do this but as our school is ever expanding I want to move away from using my own laptop and use my school computer (Windows XP) instead.

 

I've been advised to purchase Power Director but want to know a bit more before I buy:

 

1. Can I import the movie clip directly from the Sony Handycam we use to record the production?

2. Once the editing has been done how do I burn a DVD - is it within the Power Director application?

3. Once the first DVD has been burnt, how long does it take to do the additional DVD's (I usually have to burn about 50)

 

Any advice/suggestions will be much appreciated.

[laserblazer]

It depends on how you want to edit. If it's just a few cuts and transitions, then I'm sure Power Director will do the job. Anything more sophisticated might be an issue. Video Editors are designed to accept video from cameras, so I'd be very surprised if it didn't accept stuff from a Handycam. If it's a tape based camera, you will need a firewire port, othewise it probably just imports via a usb lead.

 

I don't know if it burns dvds directly but I would imagine it does, as the alternatives do. I'm lucky having a mate who duplicates and prints for me but if I do batches in school, I create an iso and then burn multiple disks in an ICT suite. It doesn't take too long depending on the file size.

 

If I were you, I'd also take a look at Adobe Premiere Elements, which burns a cracking dvd, the educational price is about the same. I'm sure others will recommend equally good (or better) alternatives.

Edited December 6, 2011 by laserblazer

[mole]

hi

 

Use PowerDirector8 here.

You can import directly from cam-tape based (firewire) and hdd cam.

You can burn a dvd within powerdirector and have found it is alot quicker than other dvd burning software especially nero.

As for copying dvd's as well you may want to look at Nero Suite which does straight copying aswell as editing. Even so x50 will take a while using anything.

[glennda]

We use Sony Vegas Here, Its brilliant - have it rolled out 2 3 of the IT Suites (under academic licensing £20 each roughly min of 50).

 

It saves a movie to ISO which can easily be burnt using all sorts of CD burning softwares free/payed for.

[Achandler]

Glennda we recently purchase Sony Vegas as a site license.

 

However we have had no end of problems trying to roll it out across the network. We use WDS to install our machines and every single computer was asking for us to re-enter the product key and then activate online. Apparently Ghosting the hard drives doesn't make this hapen, but we don't do that.

 

How have you rolled it out across the school?

 

I have a half workaround from Sony but I am currently thinkign of purely returning the product.

[glennda]

I have the software installed on the image and activated. Then I use Fog to deploy the Image to those three suites.

 

I think though the product key/registration info may be held in a registry key (as i looked there when i couldn't find the paperwork) which you might be able to export/import on the other machines.

[Achandler]

So your deploymeny is keeping the key in place as it is a "copied HDD" as such, yes the serial key is within the registry but that cannot be deployed, well it can but they still all require manual activation. The Sony workaround still involved an administrator logging into every computer and running the software once which seems a little silly to me.

[glennda]

Yes it works just like that - I use Fog rather then Ghost but Yes its a disk imaging software (image is sysprepped).