Multimedia Editing Software (for your comments!)
We’re hard at work over here on our Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Marketing, Outreach and Communications – a small reference book that will help nonprofits think through what types of systems would be effective for them based on the processes that they need to support and their current technology level.
We’re taking on 39 different types of software for that, including a few areas that we have little prior research about. As part of our guerrilla research process for this, I thought I’d put some of them up here for your comments. Did we get it right? Are we missing important things? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Many thanks to Mark Sansone at See3 Communications for helping us out with this piece– though any mistakes are our own, as he hasn’t seen this version!
If you want to create videos or podcast with even a basic level of polish, you’ll need editing software. These tools allow you to cut out pieces you don’t want, splice together different sections, and overlay things like titles onto your piece. For a podcast, you may want to edit an interview down for length, cut out “um”s and pauses to add a more professional polish, and then add some music and a voice over introduction to the beginning. For a video, you might cut an interview with a constituent together with scenes of your program participants, and put a title screen at the beginning.
While good editing takes time and some skill, a number of low-cost and straightforward editing tools have put the software within any nonprofit’s reach. If you’re using a Mac, iMovie (which comes free with the computer) is a great editing tool for straightforward movies. The free editing software available for PCs (like Windows Movie Maker and Pinnacle Systems’ VideoSpin) often impose substantial and confusing limitations (like what formats you can import and output, or insistent front-and-center ads), but Adobe Premiere Elements ($15 for nonprofits on TechSoup, or about $140 retail) provides friendly features very similar to iMovie.
Found that you’ve outgrown the low-cost options – for instance, you want to create more robust animations or special effects? On the Mac, Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro provide logical stepping stones; Adobe Premiere is also a widely used on either PC or Mac. These products, all under $1000, are likely to provide all the power that a nonprofit is likely to need before it makes sense to hire a professional video editor.
On the sound editing side, both GarageBand (for the Mac) and Audacity (for the PC) are free and solid tools that provide all the functionality a nonprofit is likely to need for in-house work.
We’re taking on 39 different types of software for that, including a few areas that we have little prior research about. As part of our guerrilla research process for this, I thought I’d put some of them up here for your comments. Did we get it right? Are we missing important things? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Many thanks to Mark Sansone at See3 Communications for helping us out with this piece– though any mistakes are our own, as he hasn’t seen this version!
If you want to create videos or podcast with even a basic level of polish, you’ll need editing software. These tools allow you to cut out pieces you don’t want, splice together different sections, and overlay things like titles onto your piece. For a podcast, you may want to edit an interview down for length, cut out “um”s and pauses to add a more professional polish, and then add some music and a voice over introduction to the beginning. For a video, you might cut an interview with a constituent together with scenes of your program participants, and put a title screen at the beginning.
While good editing takes time and some skill, a number of low-cost and straightforward editing tools have put the software within any nonprofit’s reach. If you’re using a Mac, iMovie (which comes free with the computer) is a great editing tool for straightforward movies. The free editing software available for PCs (like Windows Movie Maker and Pinnacle Systems’ VideoSpin) often impose substantial and confusing limitations (like what formats you can import and output, or insistent front-and-center ads), but Adobe Premiere Elements ($15 for nonprofits on TechSoup, or about $140 retail) provides friendly features very similar to iMovie.
Found that you’ve outgrown the low-cost options – for instance, you want to create more robust animations or special effects? On the Mac, Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro provide logical stepping stones; Adobe Premiere is also a widely used on either PC or Mac. These products, all under $1000, are likely to provide all the power that a nonprofit is likely to need before it makes sense to hire a professional video editor.
On the sound editing side, both GarageBand (for the Mac) and Audacity (for the PC) are free and solid tools that provide all the functionality a nonprofit is likely to need for in-house work.
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5 Comments:
Good list. One thing I would add is that if your editing needs are light -- things like just clipping some time off the start and end of a video -- VirtualDub can be handy as well.
Would there be any chance to include software that enables people to create simple motion graphics videos like this one:
http://sm4good.com/2009/08/15/social-media-bigger/
I'd love to be able to do sth. like that but can't seem to find anything simpler than Adobe After Effects which is total overkill. I'm sure there is something simpler if you essentially just want to have an animated presentation with sound.
I've not used them, but I've heard Sony's "Vegas" video software family is solid software with both low-end and pro-priced options.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp
Thanks, for all your comments, guys! Great suggestions. Timo, I don't actually know of anything simpler than After Effects to do text animations - or Adobe Flash would also do this stuff, but it's not really any simplier. I wonder, in fact, whether this stuff is deceptively complicated? It looks simple, but really isn't. Anyone have thoughts?
I don't know how detailed you want to get, but Adobe has pricing between Techsoup Stock and retail, with their own nonprofit discount licensing program through resellers. I got Premiere Elements for $60, and the Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle for $100. BTW: Retail for Premiere Elements is around $99; $140 is the retail price for the bundle, which is actually nicely integrated - you can drop a screenshot from Premiere Elements into Photoshop Elements, edit, and save it right back into the video, for example. Especially because the Techsoup donations cap at 4 individual licenses or 1 suite, the NP licensing was great for us.
Two other options that might be worth mentioning are some of the online video editors, and also maybe check with TechSoup Stock and see if the Ulead entry-level digital media products are expected to come back in stock.
And if CD/DVD authoring/burning fits in here as a distribution method, I highly recommend the free CDBurnerXP and the open-source DVD Flick.
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