Hi, can anyone advise if there is a simple software suite for BASIC video editing, from various cameras, ie one size fits all? Ive recentely acquired a go pro, and have a Panasonic Lumix, my version of windows 97 dosent seem to want to co-operate with the Lumix videos, handle the pics ok but dosent seem to play the vids. The panasonic software provided with the camera is awfull. Thanks
Windows 97? I don't believe there is such a creature. There is Windows 95, 98, 2000. If its any of these then its time to update your computer. A 10 or 15 year old computer will have difficulty editing video files generated by modern cameras. Yes Windows Movie Maker or Windows Live Essentials 2012 Movie Maker as they call it now will do the job.
If you're running windows 98 or thereabouts, it is highly unlikely the processor speed is up the the job of video editing. I tried it some years back on a 3ghz single core processor running windows xp and it was still slow. By the time it actually did what I was asking it to do, I had forgotten what I asked it to do. It was painfully slow. I can't imagine how slow it would be on anything less than that, and my guess is, if the computer is running windows 98, the processor speed is down around 1ghz tops.
I was using AVS4you software which sort of does everything and for $59 or thereabouts, you get lifetime free access to everything they make. So far it has worked out pretty well because they make loads of stuff.
Movie maker wont like raw go pro material as its compressed mpeg. The Lumix format is the same. They would both need to be recompressed if you wanted to use Windows Movie Maker (probably into the DV codec) Unfortunately there's not really a cheap piece of software that will handle HD editing. Sony Vegas is not too bad but see if you can get hold of Premiere Elements... good luck
