UKC

After spending many long nights carefully crafting a movie from stills and .mov files on Windows Movie Maker (I installed a codec to make it accept the .mov files), I've now found that the export doesn't work with the .mov files, and no fix seems to exist (having googled and tried everything under the sun).

I'm now looking for an alternative freeware or cheap trial of a movie editor that'll do all the normal stuff and definitely works properly with .mov files. I'm running Vista and have a crap computer so something relatively CPU-light, and fairly basic would be good: I'm not exactly Ridley Scott. Any recommendations much appreciated! Cheers.

In reply to Mr Fuller:

Daft question, does it have to be a .mov file?

In reply to Mr Fuller:

quick time pro might fix the Mov export. only £22

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/D3381Z/A/quicktime-7-pro-for-windows

In reply to The Lemming:

Afraid it does, yeah as that's what comes out of the camera, and I can't be bothered to convert about twenty files, all of which are pretty big.

In reply to Mr Fuller:

There's AVS video editor, I've used it a couple of times and it's not too bad but exports in just about anything. http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Editor.aspx

In reply to Mr Fuller:

Does the .mov play on any platform?

Have you tried Handbrake? Or VLC?

In reply to Mr Fuller:

Hopefully something may prove useful from this list of 20 free apps.

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-free-video-editing...

These may prove useful
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
https://www.lwks.com/

In reply to Mr Fuller:

re movie maker (i'm asking these questions because i don't have it installed, so bare with me)

can you import the files into movie maker and do the editing you want to do, but when you export the finished result (ie rendering out the final result) you can't save that as a .mov?
it's quite normal in the world of video editing to either transcode the files from your camera to a less compressed format before you start editing, but you don't want to do that... however there's noting to stop you doing that transcode on your output... ie putting a .mov into the video editor, but talking an .mp4 or .avi out. (for example, i'm editing a flashmob video just now that has footage from a gopro, a sony a6000 and a samsung nx "something" camera, each one has recorded in a different format, doesn't make any difference when laying the files out on a timeline. as long as your editor can read the files it's fine

you said you want something that's not CPU intensive because you have a slow computer.
problem is, video editing is a CPU/GPU intensive task, but if you can leave the machine running while it renders the output it doesn't really matter too much, I've left a machine running overnight in the past to let it finish an output.

In reply to Mr Fuller:

Thanks for all the help guys, I'm going to download AVS and give that a crack tonight.

Rallymania, the problem with moviemaker is the export into any format: the .mov files render in semi-green-screen squashed up nastiness and there doesn't seem to be a fix for this. The still images look fine. If AVS doesn't work I might look into converting beforehand and continue with moviemaker.

In reply to Mr Fuller:


What is the aspect ratio of the input images? And the output video file? It sounds like a pixel aspect ratio issue to me; green is often used as a 'background colour', and it's filling in parts of the frame that it thinks the still image doesn't cover.

In reply to Mr Fuller:

VLC is a good bet, you can convert and play loads of formats.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Aspect ratio of each is 3:4. Yes, it's exactly that and I think it stems from the codec being a bit 'dodgy' and wmp exporting badly as a result.