pinnacle or vegas for syncing audio with video

[chasman]

would anyone please give me their thoughts?????

I record audio on a yamaha aw1600 digital recorder and film with a canon camcorder. next I put everything on the computer (the audio I mix in Reaper).
I want to sync the Reaper audio with the video.
I'm thinking of trying pinnacle studio 12 (the $50 version) or sony vegas (the $55 version).

any comments on my plan super appreciated.
rock on,
charlie

[ImJohn]

You may have made a choice by now but FWIW I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum and i love it! Easy to use, powerful, stable and inexpensive! I've done all my YouTube stuff with it: YouTube - JohnLRice's Channel

[Jay M]

Vegas is incredibly similar to Reaper. If you are proficient in Reaper, then you will already know Vegas.

I'm pretty sure the 30 day trial is fully functional, give it a try.

~Jay

[theblue1]

Pinnacle -- just kidding.

I, too, use Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (the top of the consumer packages -- probably under $100, sometimes a fair bit less; the pro version is pro prices at over $500 but VMS has likely got all you need for most stuff -- 4 video channels and 4 stereo audio channels).

I tried a bunch of free and giveaway vid editors from Windows Movie Maker (XP era, kinda works but just awful w/ a horribly clunky interface), NeroVision (better in some ways but really crashy on my rigs), this thing called SuperVision 8 (don't bother) and, IIRC, Avid Free (looked cool but I never did really figure out how it was supposed to work -- and I've been around the block). Frankly, they were all discouraging.

When I popped for Sony's Vegas MS Plat, I really didn't want to spend the dough (although I got it after rebate for about $60) -- but I was immediately delighted by the intuitive, straightforward ease of use -- but the very best thing was that even on my very modest older P4, editing and realtime preview was effectively zero-wait. (It can drop some frames if you use a larger preview window if you have a bunch of crossfades and plug in FX. And not so instantaneous on rendering, of course.) And it comes with a good supply of codecs. (You may have to install the latest Quicktime to get the latest Mp4 stuff; but for the quality/size I usually use, MS's WMV format actually looks and sounds better. Go figure. I would not have thought it, for sure.)

As others note, the interface is very DAW-like, right down to the same kind of auto-crossfades many modern DAWs give you when you overlap tracks, the ability to slip edit and 'corner-drag-down' for video and audio fades. The version I have (8, one version back) also allows both track plugs and clip plugs (for indiviudal clips) for vid FX. (Although, interestingly, not for audio FX, where you have track plugs but if you want to apply an FX to a single clip in the track, you have to do that destructively [drag a copy of the clip to an unused audio track or section of track to maintain your reversion options if you want]. That may have been upgraded in the new version.)


But you might also check out this free vid editor list from PC Mag:

The Best Free Video Editors - Reviews by PC Magazine