Reaching out to this group for general advice on what will be a large video editing project for me. I am a photo guy, not video!
I have a few hundred 9 minute .MOV files that came from a conversion of Hi8 tapes many years ago. I would like to consolidate all of the files and trim segments to get some family highlights.
Any general recommendations on both the best software(s) and approach for combining all of the files and then editing to create highlights? There is a lot of boring video that I would like to trim out.
Welcome to any suggestions. Relatively speaking, I’ve done very little video work. A few basic small iMovie projects and a few in ScreenFlow. I’ve never done anything on a scale with this many files. Thanks in advance for any tips, tricks and suggestions!! – jay
(btw, I have 70,000+ photo Lightroom (Classic) library. I’m assuming I will create a separate catalog for my DAM solution for the videos. I would like to be able to tag and group)
I don’t know if Final Cut Pro is the best answer to this, but I will tell you that as intimidating as FCP looked to me, I was able to teach myself how to use it to string video clips together with synchronized audio and nice-looking transitions and trim out dead space / footage not needed quite easily. The largest project I have used it for, in terms of number of clips, is probably only two dozen. But I would imagine it would handle hundreds of clips pretty handily.
It’s not cheap, of course. And I am far from a video expert; I just taught myself on the fly as I had to adapt my church to online worship during the corona times. So someone more widely-informed might be able to suggest something less expensive. But FWIW, I have been delighted to be able to use FCP.
Good luck!
-Eric
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Eric, thanks for the response! I’m not opposed to spending the $$s for FCP if it is truly the best answer for my needs. I appreciate the suggestion and certainly will consider.
I look forward to input from others on possible other options to do most efficiently what I describe above.
iMovie should be fine. It has the magnetic timeline from Final Cut (which makes editing much more fluid) and is really easy to figure out. Unless you need advanced video proessing, it should more than suffice.
@SpivR This is excellent feedback. I appreciate the thoughtful response. — jay
If iMovie can handle that many clips, then I’d use it over FCP in a heartbeat. I assume it could, but don’t know that it could.
-Eric
Da Vinci Resolve can handle those clips. You can store your media in another hard drive if you want to. They have fairly straightforward DAM where you can drag all your clips, rename and organize. Another section allows you to trim each clip before you edit in another panel.
Also the free version is powerful enough for what you needed to do.
You can check out their website for more information: DaVinci Resolve 17 | Blackmagic Design
I don’t think there are any limits on length in iMovie, as long as there is sufficient disk space available.