[GravitySucks]

Hello - My wife gave me a Gopro 2 for Christmas. I just used it last weekend and have some excellent video. However, I need to edit it down, since my flight was 1.5 hours long. I am running windows XP on a dual core PC with tons of ram and over a terrabyte of hd space. I have been told that there aren't any video editors for XP that can handle HD, since it's running in 32-bit mode. I don't know if this is true or not.

So what do all of you use to edit your Gopro vids?

Thanks

[deeprecon1]

Movie maker is free and simple ..

[lostgriz]

[NickL]

I use Live Movie Maker in Windows 7, which is fine, but I've heard that the Movie Maker in XP won't let you save in HD quality at the end, only SD (around 420p I think). There's apparently a way round this, you download an extra file and save it into the program folder, haven't tried it though. Here's a link with a brief guide:

http://forums.hak5.org/index.php?showtopic=8521

Movie maker I think will also only let you save as Microsoft's .wmv file type, which might make the output files a lot bigger than how they come off the GoPro (not a problem with a 1TB hard drive though!). If for some reason you don't like .wmv's you could try a proprietary editor (I've heard good things about Cyberlink Powerdirector), or a freeware editor but all the ones I've tried have been ugly, complicated and constantly whinging about codec problems :/

[relate2]

Unfortunately you have struck the problem that so many people have struck with their new beaut HD video camera.

Unfortunately editing HD video is about the hardest thing you can ask your computer to do.

32 bit operating systems only allocate a maximum of 2 gig of ram to any one program, no matter how much ram you have in your computer. 64 bit operating systems use all of the available ram.

Now that I have painted the bad picture, there may be hope, if you are patient

Before you try to edit your long hang gliding video take two sample video clips of about 10-20 seconds one at 720 & one at 1080. Try to edit these first before loading a long video it will save you a lot of hair pulling.

1. First off make sure your video drivers are up to date. Hopefully you have a dedicated video card in your computer and not a motherboard video chip. Go to the card manufacturers web site and download and install the latest driver.

2. Try Windows movie maker, it will do very simple edits.

3. Download the trial version of PowerDirectror10 from Cyberlink. Then go into edit/preferences/general and put a tick in "Enable HD video processing (shadow file)"

This can be used in underpowered computers to help editing. the only thing is it takes ages and ages to prepare your videos for editing, I mean hours on a slow machine. You have to wait until it finishes which is shown with a small green film strip before you drag the video to the timeline for editing. What it does is it coverts your HD video to a lower quality so you can see your edits but then automatically substitutes the original HD footage when you go to produce/render your final video. (Do not use shadow files if your computer is powerful enough)

4. Shoot your video at 1280X720 instead of 1920X1080. Youtube video at 720 is virtually the same as 1080 and it will give your computer a better chance of editing it.

Good luck and welcome to the exciting and frustrating world of video editing.

[yedaki76]

I have my GoPro since 2 years and have long searched for a good program that can do a bit more than Moviemaker and also edits the mp4 format in a timely manner (realtime). I found that Corel Video Studio Pro X4 works excellent. You can test it 30 days for free, just visit Corel.com. You can buy it for around 70 U$, which I think is a fair price. It comes with good editorials and is very intuitive.

Have fun editing

[Hangskier]

[knumbknuts]

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum

This is probably my best work with it:

https://vimeo.com/5978082

[TomGalvin]

[andylongvq]

PowerDirector 9 on my PC.

Have also done a number of projects on my Dell Latitude laptop running Windows XP with PowerDirector 8.

Listen to "relate2". He's one of the senior contributors on the PowerDirector help forum.

PowerDirector 10 costs a very reasonable $70 to $90.

- Andy

[GravitySucks]

I tried Movie Maker and it doesn't recognize the MP4 format. Also, my dual core PC is running at 2.2ghz with 4gigs of DDR2-800mhz ram and I've installed GTX550 ti video card that has 1024mb of memory and nvidia operating system on it. Maybe I'll upgrade to Windows 7 and use PowerIDirector. When I bought the PC Microsoft was pushing Vista, but I'd heard so much bad stufff about it that I stayed with XP.

[relate2]

Vista was ok towards the end, but if you can go to Win-7 64 bit you won't look back. It will take a bit of re-learning but it is much more stable than Vista ever was.

[GravitySucks]

I dnlded PowerDirector10, but the trial version only lets you dnld the deluxe version. It doesn't handle HD, only the ultra version does. So I found a place online selling PowerDirector10 Ultra for $47. I bought a copy and it's currently being shipped to my home. I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully my PC can handle it.

[relate2]

Being half the price of the normal PowerDirector seems a bit strange. Unfortunately there have been a few rogue sites selling bad copies of PowerDirector that cannot be installed. I hope I am wrong and you have just found a great deal.

EDIT=== I may be wrong but I thought the deluxe versions restriction was in the producing/rendering of full hd video or burning full hd/blu-ray disks, not the importing of high def video.

[G.R.Henderson]

I started on powerdirector4, went to adobe8 then 9 and have just returned to Cyberlink10 with great joy, Downloaded it and paid $10 bucks more to have them send a disk as well.
I also use the AVS programs, their converter programs really are great.
I run XP 32bit, my next purchase is win7 64bit as XP is simply getting less stable, in my experience.
Adobe is a great program once you learn your way around it, but Steve Jobs had a bloody good point about them.
Cyberlink10, the full version, then you even get music and that can really make a difference. It is so much faster than adobe.

[andylongvq]

Here's another option to consider.

If a person's computer doesn't have the horsepower to handle PowerDirector 10, there's PowerDirector 6, 7, 8 and 9 all available on Amazon.

I was able to import, edit and render GoPro HD footage on PowerDirector 8 with not too many problems on my Dell Latitude laptop running Windows XP.

One of the main things I like about PowerDirector is the excellent support you can find on the Cyberlink forum. That includes support from our very own Mr. Stanwell; "relate2".

- Andy

[Scorl]

I use Power Director 10. I looked into it mostly because of the built in enhancement and filtering tools. These will improve the sharpness of the video image in 1 click or filter the audio to help reduce wind noise.

I would also advise against Pinnacle Studio. It's about the same cost as power director but has awful support and is riddled with counter intuitive editing features an still has many bugs.

The professional editing suites like Sony Vegas and Avid Liquid tend to have many more little features that can make a huge difference for large projects and come with many more supported formats and publishing options but cost an order of magnitude more.

[blindrodie]

AVID 6.0 Nitris DX but, I'm an editor! (without a GoPro )

I have ADOBE 5.5 production premium for PC's still in the shrink wrap. Make me an offer! It's going to go for cheeep...

[relate2]

Sorry blindrodie, I don't want to hinder your sale, if you are selling cheap it may be worth it.

I know we get ripped off in Australia but $2,000 for the Adobe Production Premium. Then if you want to upgrade in the future you can only upgrade the whole suite not just one component, great way to treat your customers Adobe.
http://www.apexsoftware.com.au/p581-adobe-cs5-5-production-premium-windows-full-edition-retail-box.aspx

EDIT==== Correction from Adobe Australia it is $2840
https://store3.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-AU&nr=1#loc=en_au&category=/Applications/ProductionPremium&view=ols_prod&categoryOid=6811358&store=OLS-AU

[Hangskier]